Joey's First LA Reflection

In my lesson students learned some of the basics for what traits a “strong” piece of writing should contain.  Many of the students had already had lessons involving the six traits, but I feel that this was a good refresher lesson to get them to start thinking about the traits again.  R struggled with the lesson, as he is an ELL student and has very limited reading skills.  Madi and I observed all of each other’s lessons and she was able to do a lot of one and one work with him to help him complete the lesson.  Other than R, all of the students completed the lesson and had very sound reasoning, based on their written responses, for why they ranked each paragraph where they did.

My students seem to be very engaged in whole group discussion.  However, a small group of students tend to sit quietly and typically do not contribute to the conversation.  When I looked at their written responses, they were very similar to what we discussed as a whole group.  This leads me to believe that maybe they were simply writing what we discussed and may not have fully understood or completed the lesson on their own. 

 I learned that my students are very capable of switching between small group and whole group discussion.  Aside from a small group of about 5 students I heard from everyone in the class.  As I observed them, several students took the lead in small group discussions and when I would ask each member their opinion they were all able to explain their rationale to me, which tells me that they were actually thinking about and discussing the material rather than just listening to one member of the group give answers.

 The only student that needs additional help is R.  He is currently in an ELL class, as well as a task class that is meant to complete unfinished assignments.  I talked to each of his teachers in these classes and they said that I was welcome to come in any time to re teach him material covered in class.  I was lucky enough to have an open block while he is in task every day, so I have been able to work one on one with him after each lesson.

 If I were to teach this assignment again I would change up the groups for small group discussion.  I liked that certain students were taking over leadership rules in their groups, but for a couple of the groups I felt that there were too many outspoken students mixed with too few of my quieter shy students.  They seemed to overpower them and a couple students seemed to get lost in the discussion between fellow group members.  I think that I would try to spread the more outspoken students out, so that only a couple were in each group, so as to give other students a chance to join the discussion.

 I called on almost every student in my classroom, so I thought I did a good job of giving everyone who wanted to speak a chance.  R, my ELL student is very uncomfortable speaking in whole group discussion, so I did not call on him, for fear of embarrassing him. 

 So far I feel that this lesson didn’t give me a great deal of practice implementing my core practice.  I was able to explain to the students and discuss with them the traits that they want to include in their writing in order to be successful.  I will continue to teach them good writing habits and give them as much practice with writing as time allows in LA, as well as their other core subjects.