Beers/Probst Takeaways and Questions

My apologies that it's a tad longer than the recommended 2-3 minutes, but I hope the extra 1.4 minutes won't dissuade too many people from watching. I'm really looking forward to reading the comments and responding! Here ya go:

Reflection on Appositives Mini-Lesson

Classroom Presence

As I watch more and more of the videos of myself teaching, I think I'm finally starting to believe that I look comfortable in front of the class. My general demeanor always appears more calm on the video than I feel it seems as I'm teaching. Maybe my nervousness just manifests itself in the form of corny jokes and general silliness. That works for me.

Engagement

The lesson wasn't all roses, though. As you can see in the video, should you care to watch, it's really heavy on lecture at the front end and leaves little room for student engagement beyond simply reading the slides of the presentation. I chose a grammar lesson specifically because I wanted to try my hand at engaging students with a less than exciting topic, so I'm not too frustrated with the lack of engagement up front. I'm still learning after all. It just wasn't as engaging as I'd hoped it would be, and that's probably because I sped through the first part in an attempt to make sure I had time for the game. A combination of planning for time more accurately and holding myself accountable for the specific times that I allot for activities would greatly help lessons like this. For example, when I say "30 more seconds" and then proceed to give students a full minute to do something, I've wasted valuable time that could've been used earlier in the lesson.

Relating to Students

Throughout the first section of the mini-lesson, I thought I did a half-decent job of making myself a part of the group of struggling writers by using collective language and referencing problems with my first drafts. Until I watched the video, that is. As much as I thought it may have helped, watching it seemed almost like pandering to the students and not genuinely relating to them. It's a problem that's relatively easily solved if I just get more comfortable with sharing my work with students. I need to actualize my struggle as a writer in front of them to create that trust. That's got to happen in my next writing lesson.

Checks for Understanding

For the most part, I think I did a good job of checking for understanding. Particularly, I think that making the individual check-ins part of a team event could help motivate students to really think about what they're reading and responding to. I was worried at first that this technique could be a point of contention among team members, but the eyes-closed, silent checks seemed to do a good job of allaying that fear. Combine that with the team effort to create and recognize appositives afterward, and almost everyone had the chance to show their knowledge in relatively low-pressure situations. The one outlier was the scorekeeper. As poignantly as possible, my question to Bernadette near the end of the lesson reveals the downfall of the technique. I forgot to check for the scorekeeper's engagement and assessment throughout the game. In a classroom setting, I could handpick the student that I knew already had a handle on things to be the scorekeeper for me, which would relieve a little bit of the impetus to assess the person. However, I still need to think of a way for whoever fills that role to engage him-/herself in the lesson. Perhaps, she could be the one to pick out the appositives in each of the groups sentences and could be my tie-breaker for creativity each round. I'm not sure if that would be enough of a check, but it's better than nothing. 

Thinking and Q's on Swagger-isnky and Chief Rief

General Reactions

First of all, I want to emphasize that the general consensus on more constructive, collaborative, and open-ended assignments has its obvious merits in the instruction of writing. It's a wonderful and messy process that can't be fully developed with the rigidly codified structures that I knew as a middle and high school student. As a product of less engaging and constructive writing instruction, I feel that I have some authority in declaring older modes as destructive to the confidence, creativity, and originality that develop a good writer into a great writer. Rief's conception of the Writer's-Reader's Notebook (WRN) fosters support for student voices in a way that is unparalleled in my academic history, so I fully intend on integrating that into my future teaching. Somehow, I'd like to pair that with the portfolios that Smagorinsky describes in such depth (maybe using pages from the WRN as elements of the portfolio could work). Also, the collaborative approach to constructing student texts through peer editing and different group activities appears rich with developmental opportunities.

Having said all that, however, such open-endedness does play to a few of my anxieties about teaching due to its inherently unpredictable nature. The texts tend to present this approach as vastly under-appreciated in schools and complete rarities within the profession, which could lead to some rather difficult adjustment periods for students. They might even need to be weaned off of their reliance on structures rather than thrown into the fire of such open prompts as the authors (Smagorisnky especially) appear to present. Just reading some of Smagorinksy's hypothetical prompts had me verging on paralysis of choice, and I'm a graduate student. "To show your engagement with this play, create an interpretive text in any form of your choice" (Smagorinsky 91). Anxiety-inducing. Love the sentiment, but for my own sake I'd have to wade into student freedom over the course of a few months or years before I could be so bold in my assignments.

Questions

The amount of choice students have in both Rief's and Smagorinsky's conceptions of writing instruction seem to leave open the possibility that students miss out on information that they don't know they're curious about, because they haven't been exposed to it yet. How do you ensure with such student-driven model that students will be exposed to each of the various styles and genres of writing that they need to experience (as per different school, district, state, and federal requirements)? I'm not sure I've wrapped my head around the degree to which students have choice in the classes, because that aspect is so heavily covered in each of the texts we've read. Basically, I'm still left wondering: where exactly should I draw the line between appropriate challenges and unreasonable expectations for my students and for myself as new initiate to the profession? Without an actual classroom of students to engage with at the moment, this has proven a difficult concept for me. 

Teaching and Lesson Planning Reflection

The Planning Stages

At first, Crime and Punishment seemed less like the title of our selection and more like a description of our experience planning for such a dense text. The first planning session, which took place in class immediately after receiving our copies of the text, consisted almost entirely of Lisa and me struggling to find meaning in the text for ourselves. After the brief session, we stood in awe of the complexity of the text which we were expected to use in a high school class. 

When we reconvened a few days later, we had each processed the material and came ready with a few possible entry points into the text. Taking the common themes between us, we started on our first attempt at a lesson plan by defining the context in which our lessons would occur. Namely, we thought we could teach Crime and Punishment in a unit about justice with it as our focus and other satellite texts to complement the development of the idea. From there, we found standards which might apply to that idea, and we started crafting the first of perhaps four different approaches to engaging the material. Each time we got about halfway done with a lesson, it would either focus too narrowly and stall out or it would balloon in scope and become impossible to manage in one day's plan.Creating a lesson that posed an engaging challenge which the students could realistically make strides toward within one class period proved a somewhat difficult task. 

Ultimately, we found what seemed to be a reasonable goal, which abandoned the entire context and used entirely different standards from the first attempt. We would use the text as a mentor text to teach methods for determining the meaning of words in context. In order to emphasize the importance of defining words within a context, we breached covered the concept of connotation. If students can understand the affect of word choice, then they will be more likely to see the importance of contextual meaning. We then found the standards which connected to contextual meaning, and then filled out the skeleton of our plan. 

Beginning with the text in mind, as opposed to beginning with the standard, made the planning process more difficult. It would've come more naturally if I had free reign in determining which text promoted my goal rather than which goal was promoted by my text. The disorienting nature of the situation had its benefits, though. By beginning with the text, it helped promote my thinking as a teacher. I had to read with the mindset of "what can I use from this?" just like I was reading a book on teaching strategies. 

The Practice

Taking it from the top, the hook went on a little long, so the lesson would've been relatively abbreviated by the time we got to the text itself. Our lesson plan could have benefited from listing the times intended for each activity, so we could more accurately gauge the flow of the lesson. The PowerPoint especially seemed rushed after the hook. Student involvement in the process still existed, but in a completely different capacity due to the increased pace. Rather than participating in the learning, they mostly listened to what we said or read what we had typed up for them. In both the short video segment and the PowerPoint segment of the lesson, we could have been slightly more clear about what students needed to do (i.e. write down the information we conveyed). Overall, I'm quite happy with the lesson we produced and implemented. and my main takeaways are that I need to work on timing and direct instructions to the students.  

Questions for Rief

In Read Write Teach, Linda Rief presents a lesson, based on the short story "Eleven" by Sandra Cisneros. Throughout the lesson, multiple of her teacher actions depend upon the students not communicating "the idea behind the story." She had students activate their thinking through drawing, then started a discussion and asked for student input. No input received. She then asked students to connect their drawing to the annotations they were supposed to make on their copy of the story. She started discussion and waited for student input again. No input received a second time. Finally, she used a technique she calls the "write around" to get students in conversation with each other through writing to grow their confidence enough to speak aloud about the story. Pay dirt. She and the class followed the write around with a rich discussion about the idea behind the text and what makes it an effective story. 

That's an excellent lesson, but so much of its driving force derived from students' lack of communication of an easy text. The questions stemming from this flooded my brain far more quickly than I could reach out for answers to them. Did she foresee all those separate places where the students might not have a response and have a corresponding activity ready to flesh out their thoughts or was some of the lesson pure ad lib? If it was all planned, how long did it take her to develop the skill of accurately judging where her students would need extra help (speaking in terms of the amount of time into spent with these particular students as well as the amount of time into her career)? Did she have more backup plans in case the students still weren't quite comfortable? If so, then how many back up plans? Alternatively, if part of the lesson was cobbled together on the fly, was it difficult to keep her cool in front of the class while she thought of other courses of action? Thinking more practically, how many days did the lesson take? Between reading the story aloud, drawing, writing, and making three separate attempts at discussing the story, it seems like a long lesson for one class period even without the transition time needed between those activities. Given the difficulty of engaging readers in discussion, the effectiveness of this lesson could be in peril if it spilled over into another day of class. Getting a class engaged in the same short story could be challenging if an entire class period went by without the students seeing the results of their effort in the form of greater textual understanding. 

I know I've focused a disproportionate amount of space on this one sample lesson, but the questions it raises have resonated with some of my greater anxieties about being a teacher. As someone who is relatively new to planning and organization on such a grand scale, it seems like there isn't enough time in the day to account for all the variables and nuances of instructional planning. I'd absolutely love the opportunity to read about or see a teacher in the process of planning a lesson. I want the gritty details of putting it all together, but I often feel like I'm just seeing the polished product of the author's efforts. It's a bit like walking into a room for the last five minutes of an A-Team episode. 

As helpful as it is to know that her plan worked, it would be even more helpful for me to see her struggle with creating it. She shows what she did, and tells why she did it, but falls short of explaining how she came up with it. Perhaps that information doesn't fall within the scope of her book, but it's still the source of a not insignificant amount of nervousness for me nonetheless, which is why I chose to write about it at such length. 

Response to Hook Video

Immediate Reactions:

After teaching my hook lesson, I felt a wave of relief, followed instantly by some serious self-consciousness. I had a good presence in front of the class, which was both surprising and helpful to me. Confidence in my lessons will probably take a while to come by, but at least I know I can look confident in them. That's a major plus as far as I'm concerned. I don't have to be right about everything, but I have to be confident in my role as the teacher. 

With regards to the lesson itself, I still like the idea of having students move around the classroom at the early time of the day, but maybe not within a five minute intro. It made the already short period of time feel like it vanished in a flash. I didn't have nearly enough time to go over all of the words that the students had written down under the admittedly dated headings, and that hindered my lesson a lot. The intro would have connected much more with the poem itself if I had correctly estimated the amount of time I would need to tie the student responses to the poem. Part of that had to do with my shoddy directions, which caused a bit of a detour in the lesson, so it's hard for me to judge to method too harshly. I certainly need to work on both my clarity and my checks for understanding when I give directions. 

After Watching the Video:

First thing's first, I definitely see how my directions were misinterpreted. Among other reasons, I used "good" to describe both the good and bad feelings. It was an attempt to ask for quality descriptors, but it came across upon second consideration as "give me good words and also good words." I should have described and given examples of what I meant by mood words. The lack of clarity in this first part of the hook made the intro to the poem seem forced and awkward when I decided to transition to reading it. The connection became too tenuous between the students' work and the teacher's lesson. 

Next, it took even more time than I thought it would to transition from being in the seats to out of them and then back in again. I should have started my countdown a little earlier and also specified that it was okay if everyone didn't get two words on each of the word walls. To this point, it might have been a good idea simply to separate the class into two groups and have each group brainstorm different feelings associated as either good or bad. 

Finally, I conflate the ideas of mood and tone a little at the end by asking the students how they thought the author was feeling. I should have asked, "how does that piece make you feel?" and followed it up with "what words in the piece make you feel that way?" This would have been a better line of questioning to direct students toward the mood, but I would have needed more expressive reading of the poem to inspire their feelings about it.

Response to Flipgrid Videos

While I watched the flipgrid videos, I found it helpful to characterize my response to the content in one of two ways. There were things with which I felt comfortable and which made sense to me. Then, there were things that made me cringe a little bit.

Stuff that I'm comfortable with:

I found myself making similar notes on a lot of the videos, and to a large extent the videos mirrored what I wrote down in class, especially the emphasis on backward planning. By my count, five of the teachers in the videos used that phrase in their descriptions. While I didn't use that particular phrase in my writing, I described essentially the same process of first picking the standards and writing the assessments then continuing to build the daily lesson plans up to the assessment. This makes the most sense to me, because a maintained focus on the end goal seems most likely to promote the completion of that goal. It's also very comforting to me that I wasn't way off the mark in my first response. I think I'll be happily in the middle of the spectrum of planning from Mary who plans every day before the year starts to Frank who just makes broad, open-ended plans.

I also found comfort in the repeated mention of collaborative planning or Professional Learning Communities. The task of planning a school year's worth of lessons for the first time is still incredibly daunting, but the repeated mention of a professional support system helps to keep my nerves in check. I'm still not entirely sure what the focus of these groups would be, but the focus appears to be on the bigger picture. That is to say, the PLCs mostly help with unit planning and assessment making rather than the day-to-day operation of a classroom. I could be misinterpreting the information with regards to collaboration, but that was what I gleaned from the most from Beth and David. 

Stuff that Worries me:

Most of the things I still worry about will be addressed over the course of the next two years, so I'm not unreasonably on edge about them. Having said that, though, I still feel the need to express the worries. First of all, I'm still unsure how to decide what should go into a unit. How do I decide what is developmentally appropriate for the students in my class and begin planning before having met any of the students? Once I know my students levels, the planning will go much more smoothly, but the front end of the planning process is still largely a mystery to me. How do you decide what units to teach? What do the state, district, and school provide to teachers that helps get the planning process started?

Second, there was a good bit of variation between the different schools and school districts in terms of planning. Some of the teachers described situations with very little flexibility with their schedules, because their schools or school districts had such rigid requirements. As a teacher who passionately cares about the students learning, how would I tread the line between ensuring my students actually learn and meeting the requirements of the school and district and state? If I needed to adjust the pace of my lessons to account for the fluidity and unpredictability of students' learning and abilities, how would I navigate the rigidity of those required structures? 

Finally, the video with Mary brought up something that I hadn't crossed my mind before. Planning to account for fire drills and other built in class disruptions. The thing about this that worries me isn't the idea of class occasionally being disrupted. I knew that would happen. What worries me is the idea that I haven't thought of all the different ways in which class could be disrupted. How difficult is it to adjust planning to mesh with all the different types of outside disruptions that might affect the flow of a class?