Final Post

Write as well as you can as fast as you can for a minute... or 2, 3, or 4 minutes

I am looking forward to trying this with a variety of students. Because I am subbing right now I will get to try it out on different grade levels. I want to see the differences in word choice and the average words written each time. Maybe it will work better with some grades than others.

In my own class someday I would really like to try this as a quick assessment to see what is sticking out to students, what they are learning, or questions they might have. I feel this would not be too stressful for students and a good way to see what students know.

Assignment 7

Dialogue between two animals lesson (3rd grade).

When I do this lesson again, I will definitely review dialogue writing prior and state expectations of dialogue writing piece.  If I were to do this lesson with second graders, I would use comic strips.  I'm still brainstorming for first grade (puppets, literacy centers, using a read aloud to begin discussions).  Comic strips would also work well for first grade.

Assignment Revisions

Our school had an extra long spring break (yes, poor me) and I was unable to execute my original lesson idea.  During break and upon return, I have revised my idea.  Once we returned, our school began ISAT testing so I backed off of my intention of conducting persuasive writing.  I would not have access to computers for research and also felt that to give the students something fun to work on would better suit their needs.  We have begun an individual novel unit.  Students all chose their own novel to read (any genre) and I begin to discuss elements of literature and the best ideas/methods for analyzing a piece of work.  My new idea is to have students conduct active reading work involving writing (analyzing their novel through the elements of lit lens).  I have not worked out all of the details yet but will keep you posted.....even though class is technically over. :)

Assignment 7- follow up

Implementing Jeff Anderson's teaching techniques has had the greatest impact on my teaching style. Using well-written literature and evaluating that piece with my students has been extremely helpful.   I have never used another author's piece  of writing to analyze and create discussion from.  I have found students have a deeper level of understanding for the writing process by using Jeff's teaching style.  The power-writes have been implemented two times per week in my classroom, and I see a huge improvement in their writing and confidence. Going to the NIWP conference has really changed my teaching style...for the better!

final submission

I am also going to investigate how to have students share their writings online.

#7 Follow Up

I have been following up the poetry aspect of this lesson by making Acrostic poems with my kindergartner. We did use different words that related to nature and played with coming up with new words for each letter. But for the poetry, we used our names to create a new poem, because we had so much fun doing this lesson.
I did however, have her just write in her journal about her experience in nature. She did use her senses as sort of a checklist and way to keep track of her thoughts. Afterward, she drew pictures of her experience.
I think that any type of extension, whether it be creating a different type of poem out of the nature experience, or just writing about the experience would be a good follow up for students to create the love for nature and write about it.  Of course, I think that they should all share with each other, their wonderful work.

Assignment 7: Follow Up to Lesson

My fourth graders did "Point of View" writing from two different animal's point of view. They really enjoyed this activity and have asked to do it again. They enjoyed hearing the other sides point of view. This has carried over to social aspects in the classroom. Now, when we have "disagreements" they understand that theirs is not the only point of view that needs to be taken into consideration. They are more willing to listen to the other side and hopefully understand a little more about where that  other person is coming from. It was a very worthwhile lesson.

Assignment 6 & 7: Implement/Reflect

I implemented my lesson plan for "Point of View" writing and my fourth graders loved it. We are in middle of a science unit about animals and we have been talking about food chains and food webs. I put a picture of a hawk and a mouse on the board. Half the class wrote stories from the hawks point of view, the other half from the mouse's point of view. And then we shared. Of course at the beginning they all thought their point of view was the right one, but after sharing, minds were changed. They discovered there is no right or wrong point of view, it is what it is. It was a good lesson and one that I will do again.

Assignment 7- follow up

I will use so many of the ideas and strategies I learned through the workshops and from Jeff Anderson.  As we move toward CCS, new ideas and strategies will come into play.  I am encouraging my pricipal and staff to get involved with shifting to CCS.  I hope there will continue to be classes and workshops offered next year for our staff as well as whole district.  This is the first step toward implementation of CCSS.

Lesson 5 & 6

My lesson went really well.  The kids were rested and focused coming off of spring break.  They did a nice job of listening to the story the first time and through and then recording character traits the second time.  The kids had to describe the actions of the part of the story that supported a trait they recorded.  This was difficult for many students a first, but as we worked through this as a group, they became very good at being able to support their character trait from the text.

Lesson Follow Up

As I mentioned earlier, I ended up doing my poetry lesson on personification with a mixed age-group of kids and will be doing it with my sixth graders after spring break and ISATs. I will be sure to allow for more time on the walk while trying to select an inanimate object to personify. I will also do more front-loading personification (examples) before asking students to write.

Aside from wanting to more "free" writing in general, I want to have a better understanding of the Common Core Standards for language arts. I believe this will be what guides me in developing/redeveloping some of my project-based lessons. Within all of this, I will be more diligent when it comes to formative assessment rather than being heavy on summative assessment.

What happend

My lesson was a success over all. I ended up being at to do my lesson with my 1st grade class that I student taught with. This helped because that way I had a pretty good grasp on the students and which students like writing and which students wouldn’t have anything to write. The students picked Sponge Bob and Easter as their two words. Most students wrote about Sponge Bob. For the students who had a hard time thinking of what to write, I had them write what their plans were for Easter. The students really enjoyed trying to write more and more each time. I think they were pretty done with writing by the 3rd time. They also really enjoyed picking the words once they knew what the words were being used for. Overall, I would call it a success.

Lesson Follow-up

I really love free writes and authentic writing. I feel that I don't have enough time to do this type of writing as often as I’d like. Even though my students had directions for this writing activity, I felt that the kids really took it and went with it in their own way. I hadn't done an activity like this before and the kids loved it. The grizzly bear footage was behind glass, and the area I was in was partly underwater. We watched one bear fish for live fish, then a second bear came and the first bear defended his territory. The bears got aggressive. They played and splashed in the water and jumped off the rocks. The kids thought it was neat. Next time, I would make this a longer activity. Rather than watching all 3 videos and choosing one to write on, I would break it up and maybe do one at a time, focusing on different parts of speech. Maybe the first write would include the three sentence types we've learned this year. The next write may need to include a list using commas in a series, etc. All in all I felt that it was a successful activity. :)

My lesson reflection

I totally changed my original lesson as I took a trip over the break and had an aha moment along the way. My original plan was to have art pieces around the room and to do a similar lesson as April's. Instead, I got some amazing animal video clips at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo in Colorado. Before the lesson, we reviewed verbs and adjectives. We made a small poster as a class, brainstorming examples of both types of speech. The kids had their writing journals out to take notes, and before I started the videos, I discussed note taking skills--writing down verbs and adjectives they see during the video so when they are ready to write, these words are not forgotten. We watched several clips on gorillas and grizzly bears and the kids jotted down notes as they went. Once we watched the videos, the kids wrote a paragraph about what they saw. The needed to use at least 3 verbs and at least 3 adjectives. Once they were finished, they were to take 2 different colored markers and underline the different parts of speech. We shared our writing with the class when we were finished. I find myself writing with my students as I like to model good writing habits. It was a fun activity and the kids loved seeing the real footage.

Lesson 5 and 6 implementation and reflection

Reflection

The lesson went really well!  My students loved writing the haiku from the famous picture and thought  graffiti was a great touch. Some kids had a difficult time when writing the haiku though, they wanted to write complete sentences for each line instead of a list of descriptive words.  I found a powerpoint about haikus to help them better understand the format.

Assignment 7

I realize the importance and necessity of doing short writings.  The power writings that Jeff Anderson spoke about would an effective way to help get kids' minds open to exploring impressions about things.  I think the most natural progression after that would be to do some whole class modeling and brainstorming of art work to prepare them for individual writing. I need to start collecting posters so that I can place them around the room.  The benefit of this would be the students are separated and so their thoughts on that picture are not influenced from the others.  The other thing that I was thinking about to reinforce nouns, verbs, and adjectives (which is a CCSS) is to have students in each group numbered a one, two., or three.  The respective numbers think of the above parts of speech that might identify and describe the picture.  Then the students or we could do this whole class could take the words and place them in the best arrangements.  I think the students would enjoy working on sticky notes (the way we did in the workshop) and would make it easier to move things around a bit.   Some of the responses to this lesson were I think good beginnings. And as I stated in the previous entry, I have no idea if (regardless of my students' inexperiences) if their writing was could be expected from second graders.  Personally, I'm impressed and it is a good first start.  Remembering that I ended up taking each of the pictures and we did some brainstorming together and they picked the words that were the most meaningful to them.  Here are three examples, one from each of the pictures they looked at.  Desert: hot, very, very, very hot, gets sand in your shoes, die of thirst, snakes, fun to slide down, fun to ride motorcycles on, would be fun to ride a camel, very hard to walk   Tropical Forest: green, lots of plants, makes oxygen, pretty, beautiful, snakes, monkeys, cool water, mosquitoes, fishing. lots of rain     Flowering Hillside: pretty, beautiful, I want to go there!, camping, hunting spot, pick for my mom, can see for a long way, fun to ride down on my bike,  fun to roll down, fun, windy.