Inquiry 2 - Part A - 12 questions

1.    Describe your target area for guided lead teaching.

o   For Guided Lead Teaching I will be conducting a unit on Personal Narratives. Students will learn the characteristics of personal narratives and write their own personal narrative throughout the unit.

2.    Approximately how much time per day is allotted for your instruction in this area?

o   Each day we spend 60 minutes on independent reading, 30 minutes on read alouds and 45 minutes on writing each day. Until the MEAP test is complete, the writing time is often used for MEAP prep with the third graders and extra math time for the second graders. For my unit, I will be able to share personal narratives for read alouds and will be able to use all of the writing time. The first seven minutes of writing are used for instruction during a mini-lesson and the rest is used for student writing.

3.    Which Common Core State Standard(s) will you work toward?

W.3 (2^nd) – Write narratives in which they recount a well-elaborated event or short sequence of events, include details to describe actions, thoughts, and feelings, use temporal words to signal event order, and provide a sense of closure.

W.3 (3^rd) – Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, descriptive details, and clear event sequences.

a)    Establish a situation and introduce a narrator and/or character; organize an event sequence that unfolds naturally

b)    Use dialogue and descriptions of actions, thoughts, and feelings to develop experiences and events or show the response of characters to situations.

c)    Use temporal words and phrases to signal event order.

d)    Provide a sense of closure.

4.    How will teaching in this target area provide opportunities for students to learn important content and/or skills that relate to their lives?  In what ways does this learning include learning literacy, learning about literacy, and/or learning through literacy?

o   In many situations throughout their education, students will be required to write personal narratives. In addition, most informal communication with friends and family members is some form of personal narrative. Thus, understanding the features of a personal narrative will help students communicate successfully throughout their lives. Students will learn literacy by learning to write in a new style. They will also learn about a type of literature they will be able to find in both the school and classroom library. The personal narrative is not only a form of written literacy but is also the most common vocal interaction between people. Students can practice using the features of personal narratives in their conversations with their peers as well. Finally, many movies and TV shows are personal narratives, though the features are more difficult to locate. It is possible that we could view either a movie or a TV episode and locate the features of personal narratives within. Students will learn about literacy by learning the features of personal narratives and how to write them. Students will learn through literacy by reading personal narratives throughout the unit. These examples allow the instructor and students to locate features of personal narratives that students can then locate in their own reading and mimic in their writing.

5.    What types of classroom talk take place within this target area? To what extent is the talk teacher-led, student-led, or focused on higher-level thinking? What norms for interaction would you like to build within your classroom as you teach in this target area (e.g., see ideas in Chapter 6 of Strategies that Work, the Berne & Clark 2008 article, or draw from some of the readings done in TE 402 on classroom talk)?

o   Within this target area, there will be many types of classroom talk. During the mini-lessons presented at writers’ workshop, the talk will be mainly teacher-led and I will review the features of personal narratives with the class. I will work to include their ideas and examples in the instruction allowing the opportunity for participation. In addition, I will ask students to read personal narratives during buddy reading and look for the features we learn about during writers’ workshop in these books. In this way, the discussions would be student-led and the students will be focused on their reading and comprehension skills. Finally, I will be having students create their own personal narratives. While students will be using the features we discuss, the content of the piece will be up to them. They will be asked to use a TAK organizer that we are learning about now to help them organize their writing and then transfer those ideas into the final work. The generation of a brand new piece of writing requires higher order thinking. In addition, noticing the features of personal narratives in their own and others’ writing is a version of higher order thinking as well.

o   As I continue the use of student interaction in the classroom throughout this unit, I intend to utilize the many norms already in place in our classroom. It is expected that students will quickly find their partners and immediately begin working on their reading/discussion and this is something they are very good at already. In addition, the students know that during teacher-led discussions, they need to raise their hands rather than call out as 59 students shouting out their ideas will not be productive. Finally, as students work independently on their writing pieces, they know that they should be silently working and raising their hand for help from the three teachers. These are all norms that I love in our classroom and that I want to continue to implement throughout the unit. It is also my hope that we might start to peer-review students’ writing but that may be a bit above grade level. If this opportunity arises, I would expect that students again quickly find their partners and immediately begin working. I would have students first read their partner’s writing and make notes on a sticky note about something they want to talk to their partner about (they should not write on the other student’s work). After discussing the ideas of their partner, students could then choose to take their partner’s suggestion or not. Finally, I would expect students to create a final copy with the changes suggested by teachers and peers as well as their own revisions.

6.    Which ‘core practice’ do you want to work on developing/improving as you teach in this target area (refer to document “Resources for Developing Core Practices”)? How will focusing on this core practice contribute to your own professional learning?

o   The core practices I want to develop and improve upon as I teach about personal narratives is the use of the mini-lesson that focuses on students’ instructional needs and genre study. In our school we utilize 7 minute mini-lessons to teach content before having students work independently. By improving my use of the mini-lesson, I hope to be able to meaningfully convey content instruction quickly. This will allow my students more time to practice and more time for me to work with students individually. Additionally, improving upon the core practice of genre study will allow me to teach my students great amounts of information about specific genres in a way that allows them to utilize these features in their own writing. This will help not only my current students but my future students as well because I will be better experienced in sharing this type of information in a relatively short amount of time. Thus I feel that pairing both the mini-lesson and genre study as core practices is a beneficial professional move.

7.    What resources within the community, neighborhood, school district, school or classroom do you have to work with in this target area?

o   In the community and neighborhood surrounding our school, there are many people with which the students can share their personal narratives. In our school district there are many resources available including leveled libraries, reading interventionists, librarians, and experienced writers who can assist me in understanding how best to teach students about and how to use the features of this genre of writing. In our school we have our own reading interventionist, a librarian, a school library, a classroom library, and a leveled book room in which I can find examples of personal narratives which will include the features that I want to teach students about during the mini-lessons. Finally, our classroom has many materials I can utilize in my unit about personal narratives including students’ writer’s notebook in which to practice writing, copies of the TAK organizer to help students organize their writing, highlighters for students to locate specific features in a copy of a text or in their own writing, and two teachers to help with revising students’ work.

8.    What additional resources do you need to obtain?

o   Resources that I still need to obtain are the actual texts I hope to share with the class. I will need text with examples of the features of personal narratives that I want the students to practice. I can retrieve these texts from the public, school, or classroom library but I still need to locate the texts I want to use. In addition, I need to determine the exact features that I will be including in my unit. I know that these features are a combination of the features in the CCSS standards and the features in the Waterford School District guide for teaching personal narratives. Finally, I need to obtain examples of student’s current work so that I understand which features students already understand and use and which still need to be mastered.

9.    How will you pre-assess your students in your target area?

o   To pre-assess students on their writing of personal narratives, I will ask them to write a personal narrative about a specific topic such as one of the Seven Habits, their experiences over the summer, or their plans for the weekend. I will then review these pieces in search of the features to be taught in the unit to understand which features students already understand and use and which need to be the focus of specific mini-lessons.

10.  What else will you need to find out about all students in your class to help you develop lesson plans for your Guided Lead Teaching?

o   I will need to find out what type of instruction students have had regarding personal narratives prior to this year so that I can avoid repeating what they already know and instead teach new content. In addition, I will need to understand which writing terms students already know and which they do not know so that I communicate in terms they understand and explicitly teach new vocabulary. I will also need to verify that my assignments involve kid-friendly topics that they know a lot about so that they can have enough information to write about them. 

11.  What else do you need/want to learn about the ‘core practice’ to support your planning and teaching?

o   I want to learn a little more about mini-lessons before attempting to use them daily in this unit. I am unsure if there is a general format for mini-lessons or if the idea is just to keep it short. I know that I learned this in 402 from the Tompkins text but I need to review it. In addition, I feel that I could benefit from understanding more about the specifics of a genre study as it pertains to writing. In my experiences, genre studies span both reading and writing but these are taught separately in my classroom so while I can influence some reading, I want to understand specifically how genre studies affect writing.

12.  What concerns, if any, do you have about planning and teaching your unit?

o   The main thing I am nervous about with this unit is that students will struggle with the logistics of writing and not grasp the content I am teaching. While I know that we have strong writers in the class who will be able to focus solely on the content and style of their writing, I am concerned about the lowest level writers in our class who struggle to even copy text onto a page let alone develop their own piece of writing.  In addition to this, I am most worried that I will struggle with classroom management. We have a number of unfocused and unruly students in the class and I am nervous about my ability to control these students while teaching content. Up to this point in my teaching career and education, I have been able to manage behavior OR teach but this will be one of the first times I attempt to do both.