Longe_Inquiry 2_Part A

Inquiry 2, Part A

Jacquelyn Longe

section 8

1.     Describe your target area for guided lead teaching.

For guided lead teaching, I will be focusing on Persuasive Writing. I am not sure if I will be teaching or creating unit plans for both writers’ workshop and reading workshop at this point.

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

An hour every day for reading workshop, if I am also doing writers workshop than that will be an additional hour.

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

Not sure yet.

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?

While we will be learning about persuasive writing, we will be practicing persuasive ideas through pulling in ideas or topics to write about through their own lives. We will also be reading, at this point in time, some of the One and Only Ivan and talking about different aspects of writing that can be explored through this novel as well as strategies that we can use to better understand things going on in this story. The students will be doing a variety of tasks to help them in the end learn how to write a persuasive essay. By the end of the unit we will have hopefully taken one whole idea through the entire writing process and turned it into a full persuasive essay piece.

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)?

There is a lot of teacher led talk, but I don’t feel at this age it is an inappropriate amount. I feel sometimes when it is student led talks, they tend to get off topic, so while she does guide the conversations heavily, the students do have numerous opportunities to share their ideas out with the whole class, groups, partners, and just individualized with the teacher and the student. There are usually several “higher level thinking task” type questions she will ask them, sort of more general questions that leave room for the students to ponder what we were actually talking about or reading about and truly come up with their own opinion. If it is a larger group discussion, there is room for further questioning which she will do once a student offers an opinion she wants to expand on, or she will allow many possible student strategies, than possibly suggest an idea herself if they are missing the point she wants them to grasp. More often than not though a student will provide a further thinking question or an idea that presents itself with a follow up question.

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?

Through writing instruction, I will be focusing on creating authentic, meaningful writing tasks for real audiences. I will also be consistently trying to incorporate explicit instruction strategies throughout my writing unit by using think alouds, reading alouds, guided interactive discussions and also writing things out onto anchor charts. We will also be using visualizing techniques, questioning strategies and summaries to synthesize persuasive writing topics in a final essay.

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

I have a website that I am pulling ideas from called teachers pay teachers. I am trying to introduce a unit that will flow nicely after the writers’ workshop model we are doing for personal narratives. They have writers’ notebooks as well as idea notebooks that we will be writing in and I will be able to use some graphic organizers to help students organize their thoughts throughout the persuasive writing process. Also, I will be bouncing ideas off of my mentor teacher, field instructor, and 802 professor which I see as huge resources that I need to use to my advantage.

8.     What additional resources do you need to obtain?

I will need to possibly get a different book that will better enhance the students’ ideas of persuasive writing or better explain the concept of persuasive writing to have a sample or example of persuasive writing the students could relate to.

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

I think we would just have a conversation about what it means to write persuasively, what a persuasive essay should include, what sorts of things it should not include. Also what sorts of things need to happen during the writing process to ensure a complete and successful essay is the end product of this unit.

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?

I will need to figure out if their spelling or hand writing will hinder or slow their writing process. I wouldn't want them to be caught up in the grammar or mechanics of the initial drafting process. This may be an area I would need to make specific accommodations for students.

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

How I can relate it to persuasive writing specifically and how I can relate it to the overall general writing process so I can use these strategies again when I take over writers workshop.

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

Right now, I am just hoping to finish the unit on time so I can teach it according to the calendar date scheduled to begin lead teaching. I may be starting math that first week and staggering language arts/writers workshop to be starting the week after but still with 2 weeks for each unit.

After completing this, I am thinking I will be doing writers workshop so the first few questions would be in a draft state as of right now.