Analysis of Student Writing and Lesson Plan

Analysis
The following analysis has been based on one writing sample I was able to collect from Cathy (pseudonym) and from a spelling test that I conducted.

Ownership and Meaning of the Piece
The piece of writing that I used to support my analysis was a story called "Fish's Day". The topic for the story was from a writing prompt given by her teacher. In talking with Cathy about her writing she said that she liked writing the story but that it was not entirely her idea. she liked writing a story about a fish who could talk but did not pick the topic herself. After she read me the story I asked her if she was going to have a sequel to Fish's Day. She said that she did not plan on doing that but after brainstorming different ideas about what she could write about she said that maybe she would add another piece to the story. From our conversation, Cathy did not explicitly say that she enjoyed writing, but her creativeness and enthusiasm about what could happen in a sequel made me think this was something she liked doing.

Six Traits Assessment
Overall the ideas Cathy was developing in Fish's Day had  a great structure and successfully got the reader's attention. Her topic was clearly identified and was consistent throughout the development of her writing. The title of her story alone allowed the reader to know what the story was going to be about and in what direction she was headed. To help the reader understand the transitions in her story she wrote things like "that was how my day began" and "a few seconds later" and even "a few minutes later". One thing in her story that could be developed a little better is that the reader's questions are not always answered. For example, when Cathy first heard her fish talking she said "she laughed so hard her brother couldn't sleep" but that makes the reader wonder if her brother ran in and also saw the fish talking. Instead Cathy never mentions her brother again.

Cathy's story had a very clear and engaging introduction that let the reader know where the story was going. In contract to her introduction, her conclusion was not as apparent other than the sentence "and that is how my day ended". The reader did not find out if the fish continued to talk or what happened next. Having read this story with Cathy was the cause for us to talk about if there would be a sequel. Another organizational piece was Cathy's transitions. There were times when she went from one thing to another smoothly but at other times there did not seem to be a steady switch but rather a jump. As the character in the story watches the fish swim and talk in his bowl Cathy mentions that the character is eating and that the fish tried to get the fish Angel's attention but he got mad and "Fish bit his head". There was not lead up to that in the story. Cathy did not give any clues to the reader that Angel's lack of response was making Fish mad.

I noticed in looking at Cathy's draft that she continued to develop her word choice. There were plenty of striking phrases in her story. In her draft she crossed out the sentence "I kept on tapping" and changed it to "I kept doing loads of tapping" and finally changed it to "I kept doing truck loads of tapping". She also went through her story to find synonyms for commonly used words like small, scared, and mad. She was successful in fancying up her writing and help to capture the readers imagination with a metaphor she used in relating the fishes behavior to bulls. Her word choices were accurate even while replacing commonly used words for synonyms. I also noticed in the draft that she had trouble with using the correct verb tense. This was a pretty common error in her writing. She had to change "singed" to sang, "hides" to hid, and "sleep" for slept, and "freezed" for froze.

In this piece of Cathy's writing I noticed a variety of sentence lengths and structures. They all have a purpose however, some convey more meaning and produce vivid pictures for the reader through her word choice mentioned earlier. Throughout the story, Cathy also begins the sentences in a variety of ways but resorts to starting with "I" a lot of the time.

Spelling
Not only did I have the opportunity to look at Cathy's spelling with the spelling test I conducted but also in her writing sample. In looking at her hand written rough draft of Fish's Day I was not able to find any spelling errors. Having worked on the spelling tests with Cathy I am not surprised that she is a pretty accurate speller with words in her spoken vocabulary. When we did the spelling inventory, Cathy missed three out of the 25 words (She spelled seller for cellar, comfident for confident, and opozition for opposition). For both opposition and for cellar, Cathy was not familiar with the words. They were not words that were in her spoken vocabulary. After noticing the error with confident, I wondered if I pronounced it incorrectly. However, I used all the words in a sentence so even if pronunciation was wrong the context would still be accurate. Without obtaining any patterns in her spelling mistakes I have trouble trying to decide where she would need work. It appears as though she is pretty comfortable with noticing letter sounds, and changing words to double consonants when needed. The only thing I can think is that she would need is more exposure words since two out of the three spelling errors were due to unfamiliarity.

According to Routman (2005) the students are sometimes not aware that they need to provide information to the reader to understand theie story (p. 145). I believe Cathy was pretty aware that this was something that she need to do to make her writing comprehensible. However, closely related to being able to give the necessary information to understand the story, sometime there is information that is added that does not make sense. This is an area that I think Cathy could use some help.

Lesson Plan
Objective: Student will understand that some information in a story can be irrelevant to the main topic.
Standards:
1.3.1. Revises text by adding, deleting, substituting, and moving text.
1.4.1. Applies understanding of editing appropriate for grade level
3.1.1. Analyzes ideas, selects a narrow topic, and elaborates using specific details and/or examples.
Materials:
Teacher generated piece of writing, pencil, paper, a students rough draft
Instructional Strategies:
To begin the lesson the teacher will read a sample piece of writing, either something taken from text and changed to add details that are not crucial to the topic, or something that the teacher created. Have the student listen and take notes on piece of paper the things that they wished they knew more about, or what stuck out to them as they heard the text read.
After the student identifies some parts of the text that do not lend themselves to the story, talk with the student about what things could be done. It is possible that they could be added with some other changes to the story, or maybe that they need to be deleted.
After the student makes the changes to the text, show the student either where it came from in published book or the revised text that the teacher generated.
At the end of the lesson the student will apply what they learned from looking at different piece of text to one of their own writing samples. This will give the student an opportunity to look at their own writing and wade through the irrelevant details and sentences that distract the reader rather than engage them.
Assessment:
Teacher will assess student's understanding that some information in a story can be irrelevant to the main topic by looking for a the student's revised story with a cohesive flow from one sentence to the next.

A Couple Thoughts on Teaching Math

Today was a great class. One of the first things that struck me today is when one of my classmates said "students need to understand that being uncomfortable at times is ok" in regards to answering a questions that was posed to them. To add to that statement, teachers need to realize that think time is ok for the students and should be given. When I had to teach a lesson last quarter in my dyad I remember asking questions and not lasting through the minimum seven seconds of wait time to allow for more students to think about the question and raise their hand. However, not until I asked a question and found that not a single student had an answer, not even the typical student who threw their hand up first, that I often went with the first student who raised their hand.  Right then I had the students turn and talk to their neighbor hoping that they would then come up with a response. After the minute or two talking to the people near them many of them raised their hand to answer the question. I really want all of the students to get a chance to engage in the conversation and in order to do that there needs to be a couple of moments of think time that might be uncomfortable for both the teacher and the students. However, the teacher is expected to make the situation as comfortable as possible in whatever way they can.

In class today I witnessed something that I would like to use in my classroom. After one of the table groups was called on to share a point from the reading the instructor did not summarize what one of my classmates said but instead chose another student to sum up the statement. This is something I touched on in my last blog but it was nice to see its application because I learned something about myself. I found that I am guilty of waiting for the teacher to sum up what a student’s says after my years of being exposed to many classes where the teacher does just that. When one of my classmates was called on reiterate what was said I thought to myself, “I don’t think I could really do that”. Experiencing this made me realize that I am not that great at listening.

One of my favorite parts about today’s class, which also made my head hurt a little bit, was being introduced to the positive and negative math manipulatives and the algebra tiles. However, when we were using the different manipulatives to help solve negative and positive equations I found that because that method did not come easily to me that it would be challenging to introduce it to students. That is something that I believe a math teacher needs to know. It clicked for some people in my class but not everyone. In a previous Math for Teachers class I took we learned a couple of different ways to solve equations with negative and positive numbers. Although, after learning about these new ways today I think what I learned before is actually more confusing. Instead of using a number line we would visualize or draw a flat like that would be the marker for zero (it was supposed to represent flat land). If you were going to use negative numbers you would have to dig underground and if you were in the positives you would pile dirt up above ground. For example, if had to do the equation -2+-3 you would dig down 2 and then dig down 3 more to be at -5. However, I think this way of solving equations with negative numbers gets confusing when you have to switch the signs. Realizing that there are so many different ways out there to introduce negative numbers to students makes me realize how important it is to be familiar with many different methods.

i Teach With My i Touch

While I have not had the opportunity to use my iTouch in my main placement yet, I am really enjoying thinking about the different uses and how it could be used for differentiated instruction. I am really noticing the different strengths and abilities of the students in the kindergarten classroom that I am in. Some students are reading beyond grade level, while others are still struggling with letter sounds. Some are confident with guess and go spelling during writing time, while others have to ask how to spell something before they can move on. Even during our math time I notice how some don’t want to show their work to solve a problem, while others have to if they want derive at the correct answer.

Thinking of three different students in my placement I believe the iTouch could be used to assist their learning. One of the students in the class is really struggling with matching the sounds to letters and even just saying what sound a letter makes. I believe the use of an iTouch with a phonics app would help her to practice her letter sounds. There is another student in our class that is in a similar situation as the one I just mentioned however she is an English Language Learner. She would benefit from using similar apps. The student learning English has not had enough exposure to our alphabet and the sounds the letters make which automatically places her behind the majority of the class. Another student I believe that would benefit using an iTouch is a student that is doing some therapy for his fine motor skills. Not only would the Touch require precision as he first just selected which app he wanted on the screen, but there are a variety of apps that would help him work on his motor skills throughout their use. There are apps for hand writing where you have to trace the letters, and apps where you have to make matching selections. This would help the student to focus in on what is needed and strengthen his fine motor skills as he used his muscles to make necessary taps of the screen.

For the last student that I mentioned, who needs assistance strengthening his fine motor skills, I could also see the use of the Touch being very frustrating. While I have not witnessed this student get frustrated before, I would be concerned that using a Touch might be too challenging. If he was playing a game on the Touch or just working on something else I could see that it might be discouraging if he continued to touch the screen in the unintended spot.  I suppose a limitation in using the Touch for the two girls I had mentioned that need help with letter and sound recognition is that they might not be able to use what they are learning within the context of a text. If they are just going through drills of letters and sounds and are not able to recognize them outside of the app then they are not able to apply what they are learning.

Continual Thought: Can a Student Say That For Me?

For some reason reading the title of the article Never Say Anything a Kid Can Say really confused me. I could not figure out what the message behind those words was going to be. Now having just finished reading it, the article's title makes perfect sense. Teachers, or adults, should not have to talk/lecture/clarify if the students are capable of delivering the same message.

I think a lot of good can come out of having the students talk instead of having the teacher constantly be the one explaining and clarifying.

1. The teacher gets the opportunity to see if the students understand (and this might just mean the directions that were given if you ask them to repeat them, or if they understand what their classmates are talking about if you ask them to synthesize)

2. This makes the student have to pay attention to their classmates instead of just listening when the teacher talks.

3. The teacher can also preserve their voice while taking advantage of the 25 or so more teachers in the classroom. The students can be great teachers they just might need some exposure to being one.

One of the things in this article that I enjoyed was the reminder to be nonjudgmental about a student’s response or comment even if it is intended to be positive. If a teacher tells a student “wow, that was great” you run the risk of the rest of the class not giving any input or additional answers out of fear that their comments will be no where comparable to “great”. Plus when you tell a student something was ‘awesome” or “good” those are seemingly useless words because they provide no feedback for what was awesome or good. Students just hear those words and feel good about the reaction but they do not know why exactly they produced such a response or how it can be duplicated. Our students need to know that so long as they put in the effort to genuinely answer a question then all answers are good.

I also really liked that the reading mentioned what to do if a student comes up and asks if their answer is correct. Instead of saying yes or no say, “I don’t know, could you explain your thinking”. This could be used as an informal assessment. The teacher would be able to observe if the student understands what they are doing, if they know the proper steps, if any steps were skipped, and if they were using the right terminology. In addition this would save the teacher some time because they would not have to guess where things went wrong if the student did not understand or got the wrong answer. They would simply point the teacher right to the problem while they were explaining their thinking. Also, students benefit a lot from trying to verbalize their thinking. We constantly have to explain ourselves either inside of school or out, so another opportunity to do so would be beneficial.

I really enjoyed reading this article. It made me realize some of the things I do, like answer my own question, or that other teachers do, like repeat what a student said. I will most likely return to this article to reflect on my teaching practices and see which ones are working and which ones need to go.