From Good to Tremendous

There are a variety of good things happening in the classroom right now. I've got my assessments laid out for the remainder of my unit, some small and some big. I didn't quite have this laid out earlier, and it is a bit of a relief (I knew where I was going, but there are few assessments with the curricular materials... and they're spotty). So assessment is going on the right track.

One of the lead up projects is creating an audio advertisement for one of the early colonies. This requires finding main ideas in our social studies text, deciding which they'd most like to live in, and then spinning the information into a written script. To put it all together, I'm teaching a few kids how to use Audacity, and then having them teach others how to use it (they essentially become engineers leading their peers). Thus far it has been really successful. Hearing their ad, and then knowing they'll be voting for where they'd most like to live based on the ads, has generated some buzz.

I'm also pulling small groups during each rotation. I have 3-4 students per rotation, per day, that I am focusing on monitoring their comprehension. Right now we are doing less strategy instruction, but that will come back post-Thanksgiving. I'm working more on nonfiction structures, and text structures as a whole, which has also been successful.

Lastly, some good things are coming in our writing block. Devoting a number of days to writing (3 weeks now?!) has given us a chance to really develop some ideas. We're writing essays, and now that everyone is back from sickness we're moving towards putting things together. Very excited.

Change of Plans

Probably the most important part of teaching is knowing your kids. As a first year teacher, I don't have the wealth of experience that veteran teachers do, and that I second guess myself a bit. Are my kids having the expected outcome? Are they meeting my learning target? What could/should I change to make maximize engagement?

This week I had one of those second guessing moments. We had transitioned from reviewing some cause-effect relationships in fairly easy text to looking for them in our social studies text. In particular, what caused events that formed colonies, and what was the effect of those events? Once we transitioned, the learning became fragmented, and lots of off-task behavior started. For me, the off-task behavior isn't the kids fault. It is related to my instruction, and my lack of scaffolding (as well as engaging work).

Instead of working with small groups and helping them on the text, we read whole group. We stopped looking for events that happened, and looked for the cause/effect. Big questions were "Why did that happen? Who did that impact? or What was the impact of that?" For example, the Jamestown colony was built on a marsh. What was the effect of that? Light bulbs went off as we traveled through the idea that mosquitoes were there in the wet marsh. Mosquitoes carry malaria, and the settlers got bit by them... hence they died. Ah ha!

Again, it takes re-reading. Re-reading isn't lots of fun. But it needs to be done.