WK 14 Assignment 1 and 2.

Assignment#1

Describe and evaluate the approaches you observed from the classroom.

I observed a 6^th grade ELA teacher-with direct literacy approaches to instruction included go over literacy meanings from italics bolded words, teacher read aloud, audio read aloud, paragraph structure with graphic organizers. Of which I am in strong favor of because graphic organizers at times can be very effective for writing conventions and student organizations of ideas. Model read aloud from the teacher and audio recording were very effective for listening, writing and read along skills. Reading centers were absent in this classroom because for the most part it was mostly teacher directed. Some student decisions to what reading and writing materials for a lesson could have been included to illicit student connections and ideas. Word structure and vocabulary instructions seemed to be a necessary scaffold for this class because student population consist of 50% ELL’s and IEP students.  Most of the reading and writing assignments were individual with not much peer sharing ideas. It’s important for intermediate levels to peer share and work in groups for idea reflections to improve upon their work.  Transition for students reading spring boarded to writing assignments with summative assessment weekly quizzes. I would have like to observed additional ongoing assessments instead of weekly quizzes to correct errors. However, teacher pulling of two students at a time for written assessments while the class read silently was evident and very effective. Student’s metacognitive acknowledgement connections included rewrites, revisions and editing final drafts to share out with the class. I read some of the before and after narrative of students written work and there was a drastic improvement in assigned narratives after one on one corrective verbal assessments. Perhaps more revisions with peer sharing to discuss ideas prior to writing could have been implemented for student reflection feedback. Intermediate students enjoy peer sharing and it should be teacher encouraged.

 

 

 

Assignment #2

1)      How much time will you schedule for student writing? Perhaps writing in science content area can be accomplished daily with student connection to a topic: say for example if a topic is about gravity students could choice to write a short paragraph about what they know or how gravity effects them and share it out after revision with their peers.

2)      How do you structure this time to support and advocate student writing? Time writing could be accomplished at the beginning of the class and doubled up with a content topic to further support student writing.

3)      How do you increase opportunities for student to improve writing? Student writing can be added to daily journals or portfolios for student and teacher one on one review for connection feedback assessments for improvements. Also, portfolios/journals content topic written ideas can be connected to class major writing publishing projects and shared out with peers or parents. In the past to support upper grade guided writing assignments students have shared written revised projects with lower grades through presentations.

4)      How do you balance student choice with teacher choice of writing topics? The balance between student and teacher choice could be a personal student narrative of what interpretations students learned about a topic from science content reading or a student written inventive from self-questions on content topic ideas.

5)      What challenges/questions do you have scheduling adequate time for writing? Scheduling time for writing in science content sometime presents a challenge but doubling up on investigative question exploration of content topics can spring board to students writing. Which is a great implementation from the video that promotes more student daily content writing.