Day 118One of the most important things that I teach fourth-grade kids is to take critique and then to act on the feedback. This is a hard thing for adults to do. Regardless of our age and where we've taken our skills, career, etc., we really love getting positive feedback and shy away from criticism. Here is the thing: if we're going to improve what we do, if we're going to take our work to the next level, if we're going to up our game, then we need honest critiques of our work. Then, we need to take action.
Of course, this is true for our elementary students. Establishing a classroom culture where critique is valued takes some work. First, students need to be taught to critique work...not students. When students focus on giving feedback on work rather than giving an appraisal of a student, the feedback is easier to accept. Modeling and in-the-moment coaching helps to guide students who are giving feedback. Next, students need to be taught the difference between a fluffy compliment or a vague criticism and specific feedback. The goal of specific feedback is to guide the student so that he or she knows exactly what can be done to make a piece of work better. Critique is something that happens regularly in our fourth-grade classroom. Before sharing work, I remind my students that they're going to get feedback that will guide them in improving their work. I remind them that EVERYONE in our classroom is working on something. I remind them that their classmates and their teacher will give specific feedback because we care deeply about them and their learning. Today the students were challenged to make sense of two collections of data. The students in a pre-school classroom and the students in our own classroom were asked to grab one handful of snap cubes and then to count them and record how many they could grab. The fourth-graders were asked to use one representation to share the results of the grab in each of the two classrooms. First, and perhaps because the students knew their work was up for critique, each representation was high quality. The students presented their representations and then hands began to take to the air. One by one, the presenting students called on their classmates to speak and listened to each critique without explaining or getting defensive. In the end, my question is always: given the critique, do you know what you'll do differently next time? The students always walk away knowing specific things they'll do to correct their work. Critique helps to grow our practice. It certainly has the potential to guide us as teachers. Of course, if done well, it can do the same for our students. Today, we critiqued math. Tomorrow we'll critique writing. In the end, we're looking to elevate our game. I think we're on our way.
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Day 117The last two days have been really exciting ones for our students. Yesterday, Crystal, from a local farm visited with our students. Today, Jessica, a volunteer farmer at an animal sanctuary just down the street from our school stopped in to chat with our students. Our fourth-graders, who are reading Charlotte's Web, have been wondering how farm animals should be treated. This question first came up the day that Wilbur escaped. Wilbur, a pig, encouraged by the goose, escaped his pen and had an adventure in the pasture. While out on the lam, Wilbur did everything that came natural to him. He rooted, he smelled, he ran, and he explored. It was a glorious adventure. This got my students thinking...shouldn't Wilbur be allowed to live like this every day? What kind of life was he living all cooped up in a barn with only a small pen to visit where he could "enjoy" the great outdoors? Our students have launched an inquiry. Some already have strong opinions about the treatment of farm animals. Others are just beginning to form their opinions. Each student will focus in on one type of farm animal. They'll do some research to find out what this specific animal requires in order to thrive. But yesterday and today students had the opportunity to interview an expert. First they brainstormed and refined their questions so that they would have the best possible chance to get the information they desired. In the end, these were the students' questions: 1. Do your animals spend time outside? Can you tell us about their outside space? 2. Do your animals spend time in pens? How do they behave in their pens? 3. Can you tell us about your farm animals diets? Can you describe how they are fed? 4. Which animals do you have at your farm? How do you ensure all their different needs are met? 5. How many times do the animals get fed daily? 6. Do you believe that farm animals should be killed? If so, can you describe how you work to keep it stress free for the animal? 7. Are baby animals kept together? Do they get to stay with their mom? For how long? 8. If an animal who has died a natural death be used for food? 9. How does your farm care for sick or pregnant animals? 10. What are some of the daily chores involved with caring for the animals on your farm? 11. How do you handle misbehaving or uncooperative animals? Crystal and her family members run a local farm that provides beef, pork, lamb, eggs and some produce. Customers love their products because they know that they don't inject their animals with hormones and they know that the animals are well cared for and have enjoyed a happy life on the farm, roaming the pastures and socializing with other animals. Crystal clearly loves her animals and is dedicated to their well-being. When an animal is feeling under the weather, Crystal brings that animal into her KITCHEN to recoup. That is love! In the end, the animals at Crystal's farm are trucked off to a processor who does the slaughtering in a humane way. The below picture is of six happy little pigs from Crystal's farm. Life is good for them! Today, the students met Jessica. She is a tour guide and volunteer at a sanctuary farm in our town. She also adheres to a vegan diet. The animals at the sanctuary are well cared for. They receive food, shelter and medical care as needed through donations and through the good work of volunteers. The 100 or so animals at the sanctuary will live out their days in peace there. When they cross the rainbow bridge, they will be buried on the sanctuary grounds. This little pig lives a peaceful life at the sanctuary farm. His name is Johnathan and he weighs approximately 800 pounds! Life is good for him! At the end of the day, our students, even the ones who went into these two days with strong opinions, were thoughtful. As Jessica took her final questions, one of my students raised his hand and said, "I enjoy eating meat and even after today, I plan to continue eating meat. However, I hear what you are saying and I really do understand why some people choose to not eat animals. I get it." So while our project really is about farm animals and their treatment these two amazing community members taught our students more than we hoped. Our experts inspired empathy. This was a wonderful experience for our students and it was a pretty great experience for me too! Day 116I have a student who has TREMENDOUS energy. He isn't really a behavior problem in the classroom. Well, what I mean is that he isn't fresh. He isn't intentionally malicious but he is A LOT to handle. (This is true in the classroom but not exactly true in other environments.) First, he is constantly on the move. He never stops. His body is in constant motion. He dances around the room and because of this he has a HUGE presence in the room. He is also fairly destructive. He ruins stuff. For example, he pulls apart erasers and even pencil top erasers. It is only October and his notebooks are already a mess. He just shoves things in his desk. As a result, some of the corners are torn off, pages are wrinkled. They actually look like March notebooks or maybe May notebooks.
This kid has a really difficult time focusing on any task. If he is to accomplish anything, I have to be in very close physical proximity to him. He works best when he is afforded the option of working one on one with an adult. This is sort of frustrating because this kid is so smart. He is capable. I wish he could focus but he can't! During one of our #classroombookaday sessions, we were reading a book about a kid who struggled. My student shared that he used to struggle to pay attention and that he used to take a medicine for that but that it is no longer needed. Hello, what? I think it might still be needed. Just saying! Actually, I just really want this kid to be successful. The truth is, he is quite smart. I can always rely on him to make the deepest, most compelling connection to any literature we read. He has remarkable number sense. He is amazingly articulate. English is his second language. He is definitely struggling in some ways. His oral reading is a real challenge. I'm not sure if he struggles with reading fluency and accuracy because English is his second language or because attention is such a struggle. What is notable however is that despite the interruption in his fluency, his comprehension is surprisingly intact. When I can get him to actually put words on a sheet of paper, his writing isn't half bad. His spelling isn't even terrible. However, he requires so much teacher attention in order to attend to any task. His impact on his classmates is something I'm concerned with too. While I am sometimes surprised at how little his behavior seems to distract other kids in the classroom, he is not always the kindest boy. For example, if the kids are seated on the floor and he can't see the board, he'll start ordering kids around and attempting to direct traffic. It doesn't occur to him that he could just move his own seat. Things get really ugly when there isn't adult supervision. The playground, the bus, the cafeteria, places where there is less structure and more freedom, are places where this kid becomes something like a tornado. During these less structured times, he can become downright mean. He has a way of seeking out the most vulnerable kids and putting them down. What he says to them is hurtful. He knows just how to get at kids. His words are harsh. I can't imagine being his bus driver. I can't turn my back on him for a minute. I just can't imagine driving a bus and having to have my back turned the whole time! However, today, he was absent. It is wild when he is out. I can't believe the time that is freed up to spend with other children. I know that fair isn't every child getting the same thing. Fair is every child getting what he or she needs. But when this kid is present, he gets more than his fair share of my attention. Other children, who really need my attention are neglected. When they are neglected there isn't an impact on the whole class. When this single child isn't attended to, everyone suffers. This just isn't fair. But today, everyone got what he or she needed. At the end of the day, I hustled off to the supermarket and bought some groceries. I picked my daughter up from field hockey and went home where I made a really nice dinner for my family. I sat in my living room and did school work for a few hours. I wasn't completely wiped out like I am most days. I wish there was something I could do to change this situation. It is terrible for the students in my class. It is not good for me. It is especially bad for this boy. I feel rather powerless. This is going to be a challenging conversation at parent-teacher conferences. I really hope his parents come. Day 115Parent communication is really important to me. It is a priority. I know that my students will have a better year if I connect with them but I also know that connecting with their parents is important too. I have a running list in my head. I'm always compiling the next email or blog update in my head. And I always intend to get that email crafted. I intend to update the blog. Time just gets away from me.
Then, I'm not all that motivated to update the blog when I see the stats. Even when I send out an email letting parents know that I've updated the blog and that there is important information for them there, the stats showing visitors are disappointing. I get it though. I am the parent of two teenagers. Our lives are really busy. They play sports and my daughter dances. My husband and I work full time. Their schools are great at communicating with families. We have emails in our inbox from each school at least twice a week. We care about their educations . We really do. Still, keeping up with all of the communication isn't easy. What I know for sure is that I care about my students and their parents surely do too. We're all doing our best. I wonder what would be possible for me if I could just do my best and not be so judgie. I judge myself ALL THE TIME and I even judge the parents who don't get around to reading my blogs. Well, tonight I designed a Google Form so that I could invite parents to parent teacher conferences. I emailed the parents with a link to the form. I also updated my blog and I emailed parents to let them know that it has been updated. Maybe they'll visit the blog. Maybe they won't. It is actually okay either way. We are all just doing our best. Day 114Week 6 - Authentic AssessmentsA seventh grade class featured in the video here has had an opportunity to participate in some pretty authentic learning. Their project highlighted the difference that some local citizens had made during the Civil Rights Movement. Their final project was a showcase where they publicly celebrated these citizens. You can certainly understand why the nature of this project would inspire, engage, and motivate the seventh-graders to do their very best work.
Recently, our team of fourth-grade teachers planned a Charlotte's Web project. We wanted to keep the project rather simple but still give students agency and choice. In the end, our students own inquiry inspired the project. Just as Wilbur is being lured back into his pen with a bucket full of slops, my students wondered, "How should farm animals be treated?" Some had heard of free-range chickens and Wilbur's escape into the pasture, where he was free to roam and explore, caused them to wonder about his life in captivity. When working to make the work in our classrooms authentic we always pause to consider how adults in the "real world" respond when we have questions. I know that I do some research and I ask experts when I want to learn about something. When some injustice tugs on my heart strings, I try to collect the facts before speaking out. We wanted to give our students the opportunity to collect the facts and then use them to inform their opinions. Their final product was to be an opinion piece. Students will write an opinion piece, backed up by reasons and facts, in response to the question, "How should farm animals be treated?" Each student will focus on a specific farm animal of their own choosing. and they'll have opportunities to interview experts with conflicting opinions. In the end, our student opinion pieces will be bound in a book. These books will be copied and shared with our town library, our school library, our high school's library and our area experts. We'll share their pieces in SeeSaw so that their parents can read them and we'll share writing pieces on the classroom website. We work hard to ensure that the work our fourth-grade students are doing mirrors the work that adults do every day. We know that the initial question, that came from the students themselves, is engaging. Many already have strong opinions on the topic. We're eager to see how their research and interviews inform these opinions. Making the learning authentic isn't always easy given the district-adopted curriculums we use but when we rethink what we do, we often find that the result is truly worth the effort. I'm eager to see where this inquiry takes our students. I'm sure to share more as the inquiry unfolds. Day 113Today I had a visitor. She popped her shiny little head in the door and lit up the room. She has always had a joyful glow about her but today it kind of took my breath away. Today was Friday. I had last seen this sweet girl about a week and a half ago when I stopped by her mamma's wake to tell her how very sorry I was for her loss. Today she asked her dad to visit with me. There are no doubt a zillion other things that this man has on his list of things to do. Instead, he took his daughter out to get a "coffee" while they waited for me to get out of school.
We chatted about the classroom and she told me all about school and complained about the size of the lockers. (They are so ridiculously narrow.) I asked her how gymnastics was going and she told me that she had been on the trampoline working on her back tuck. I asked about her family and how everyone was doing. She actually didn't tell me much about how she was doing but she did say that all her brother has been doing is playing video games. We talked briefly about how everyone copes with a broken heart a bit differently. I asked, without pushing too much, how she was coping. She said she plays outside and spends time playing with friends. After chatting about Harry Potter and magic wands, I packed up my things and we walked downstairs together. Her dad had been waiting in the office. I hadn't known her dad all that well but I have been told that he is every bit as amazing as his beautiful wife was. I saw a small glimpse of that today. Even though we had been upstairs chatting and he had been waiting, he didn't seem one once rushed or impatient. It is so very clear that he is doing his best to love up his kids and keep their lives on track. After father and daughter left, our school secretary revealed that she had talked to the dad a little. He admitted that they are in "survival mode." Of course they are. I'm quite sure that every day must seem like a painful challenge. Because the mom was so radiant it must be all the more difficult because her light is no longer there. It sort of is though. It was there in her daughter's smile the minute she popped her head in the room. It was there in the way that the dad explained that he is wrapped around his daughter's little finger. I know they must all still be in shock. I'm not even sure they are in survival mode yet. But there is still so much love in this family. I just know they'll find their way. Before we left the classroom today, I jotted my email address down for this little darling, just in case she ever wanted to talk or keep in touch. I'm just about ready to call it a night. I've already received three emails from my little friend. They are silly! She barely says anything aside from, "Hi!" but I write her back each time. She is just the kind of kid you want to be there for. Her mom was amazing. She is too. There is no doubt about it, her visit was the highlight of my week. Day 112I am often conflicted when making instructional choices. If I could rewind my teaching reel and go back to the year 2000 you would see that my writing instruction looked a lot different than it does today. Back then, a major focus of my instruction was helping students to become fluent writers who knew their voice. They wrote all kinds of pieces. Some were journal entries. Some were imaginative. Others were informational. They wrote scripts to accompany "how to" demonstrations. They wrote poetry and they wrote book reviews. Over time, each of my fifth graders would find that writing was for them. Each eventually found his or her niche. My instruction honored the art of teaching writing.
Early on in the school year it was all about volume. Generally students didn't come to me as writers. Getting them to a place where they could fill a page with their own thoughts was a small feat. Honestly, it wasn't about quality in the early days of the school year. I remember celebrating a dyslexic little boy who filled seven pages in his composition notebook with a story about a fly who had an adventure of his own by attaching himself to one human and then another. The little writer even included famous "humans" like Forest Gump. What he didn't include was a single period! It didn't matter. He had filled seven pages with his own words. It was a small miracle for this kid who for the first time, saw himself as a writer. That is what it was about. Once I had a classroom full of writers, I could start focusing on the power of vivid vocabulary and including just the right amount of description and just the right amount of dialogue to hold a reader's attention. MCAS was a new thing. It hadn't really made its mark on our teaching yet. Today I photocopied a page from Charlotte's Web. It was a lengthy description of the Zuckerman's barn. The focus of my lesson was using text evidence when responding to comprehension questions. Today's question was: What is your opinion of Zuckerman's barn? Use evidence from the text to support your opinion. Aside from the obvious goal of getting the students to form an opinion based on text they'd read and then supporting that opinion with evidence from the text, my goal was go get my students to write a decent paragraph. Ideally, it would open with a sentence that introduced the topic. They'd fluently include at least three details from the text that supported their opinions of the barn. Ideally, they'd be able to wrap the whole thing up with a concluding sentence. Oh ick! Truly, this isn't the only kind of writing I teach. Aside from technical writing, I do teach creative writing. Our state standards demand that we teach narrative writing in addition to opinion writing and informational writing. While we are able to have a little fun with the narrative writing, it all seems so formulaic. Teaching narrative writing isn't really enough. Our students are often asked to read the start of a narrative and finish it as if he or she was the author. Sometimes, they're asked to compare two texts and synthesize the information. There is so much to prepare them for. And because I'm doing all this preparing, I'm not so sure I'm growing writers. I work hard to keep some of the fun of writing alive. My students write letters to Harry Potter every week and we have pen pals. They're senior citizens from our town. But writing isn't quite the same for me as it once was. I keep thinking that there is some balance to be struck. I look for that place where I can coach my students towards proficiency. I take the charge to address the standards seriously. I just haven't found the balance and I just really miss the art of teaching writing. Day 111I'm about to write about what is on my mind. Kind of. I mean, it is not like it is monopolizing my every thought...I've just stopped to think about it here and there...definitely more than I should. I realize that it is complete and total nonsense. I know I shouldn't give it a single thought. Nonetheless, I have, and here I go, I'm now writing about it!
My team spent our PD day planning a PBL unit. We were pretty pleased with how it came together. There is nothing super special about what we've planned. Really, there isn't. We just liked what we came up with. We liked the simplicity. We liked that it tapped into our local resources. We liked the message the unit would send our students. We were all pretty excited. I was on Twitter today. BAM! There was a photo. It caught my eye. Another school, another fourth grade class, pretty much did EXACTLY what we had planned to do. They did it first. They tweeted it out. We know them...well. Now, when we do it, it is going to look like we were inspired by that other fourth grade class. We weren't. Honest! I shared the tweet with my teammates. They felt the same way I did. How could this be? We really thought we had a unique and new angle. Here is an even better question: Why does it even matter? Intellectually, I know that it shouldn't. I really do. If what we do is about the kids and their learning, then it REALLY shouldn't matter where our ideas come from. It shouldn't matter if we are inspired by the teacher on Twitter or the teacher next door. If our focus is on creating meaningful learning opportunities for kids then it doesn't matter. Here is an ugly little truth about teaching: we often let it matter. Honestly, teaching is a competitive field. You wouldn't think that it would be. Here in MA we've fought back against merit pay. Still, there are other ways that school committees and administrators encourage competition over collaboration. In my district, like in many others, a single teacher is awarded a "best teacher' award twice annually. This award recognizes teachers who go above and beyond. They receive a trophy. His/her picture is put in the local paper and on the district website. In my building, a single teacher is recognized for acknowledging positive student behavior more often than his or her colleagues. Really. He or she gets a prize. These awards and prizes are established with the very best of intentions. Still, I'm of the opinion that they do more harm than good. When I first started my career, I taught in a building where there hadn't been new hires in years. We were three new teachers in our early 20s on a staff of mostly 35-55 year-old teachers. We came with our project based learning (yes, back in the 90s this was a thing!) and our thematic teaching. I was even using the world wide web to communicate with scientists who were exploring Antarctica. We were "cutting-edge" and we got quite a little bit of praise from building and district administration. The other teachers would roll their eyes at us and call us shiny new pennies or perky young things. Praise, while it feels good in the moment, is a double-edged sword. Social media has kind of exacerbated this problem. Teachers are encouraged to promote the learning that unfolds in our classrooms. The most virtuous of us share what we do to inspire others. We share in the interest of helping to lighten another teacher's work load. We post whole units to be shared because we believe in working hard but having our hard work have the greatest possible impact on student learning. However, every time I send out a tweet I worry about how it'll be received. Will It be perceived as boastful? Will teachers look at my work and wonder why I would ever share it because it lacks merit, or bling, or whatever? I sort of fear the eye roll of my colleagues...even colleagues from across the country, who I'll never ever meet. I'm ridiculous but I don't think I'm alone. My students and I have accepted the #classroombookaday challenge. A librarian started it a few years ago. It is all over Twitter. We're reading 180 picture books this year. It is true awesomeness. My students LOVE this time spent reading picture books together. A teacher from my district did it last year. She loved it. She tweeted about it. I loved following her project on Twitter. Another teacher recently asked me, "oh, did you get the idea to do it from so and so?" There seemed to be a little tone when she posed the question. IT IS ALL OVER TWITTER. It is not a new or unique idea. Who cares where I got the idea? Isn't the fact that I'm doing it awesome enough? Not only do we have to do amazing, creative, things. but now we have to dream them all up ourselves in order to be truly worthy of praise or admiration or whatever. I wish I didn't feel like teaching is competitive. I wish I didn't always worry about other's perception of me and my work. I wish we could simply focus on collaboration. Teaching can be competitive. It is just the way it is. Day 110Engaging kids is not something I've really struggled with over the course of my career. Generally, I love what I do and getting students to participate fully hasn't been a stretch. However, there are activities that are more or less engaging for students.
Direct instruction still plays a roll in our classroom. While direct instruction has evolved, it still involves kids sitting and listening rather than kids doing. The major shift in direct instruction in our classroom is in who is doing the bulk of the talking. I am working so hard to talk less and listen more. In the end though, lessons that are direct instruction in nature, can result in disengagement if structures aren't in place to keep kids actively involved. Even though structures like "turn and talk" and asking kids to share their partners strategies or thinking help to maintain engagement, some students will be vulnerable. It is our job to stay tuned into all the learners in our class and to adjust our practice when needed. Over the course of the year, we grow a culture in our classroom where students become accustomed to thinking deeply about the math so that they can solve problems. Students practice arguing so that they can agree or disagree with their classmates based on what each is noticing about the math. This work is important to developing how kids think and support their thinking with proof. This work is reliant on their being a variety of view points in the room. Students have to practice listening to one another, thinking about what they've heard and integrating the new ideas with what the student already knows. Some of this work has to happen in the context of direct instruction. Today, students in our math class investigated the number of raisins in a typical 1 oz. box of raisins. Now, this lesson was engaging! Everyone was focused. There were NO off-task behaviors. There were no zoned-out expressions. Students were productive. First, students had to count the raisins in their boxes. I was so interested to see how students were counting their raisins. There is a real emphasis on using counting bags with students across elementary grades. I can see why. Students whose number sense is secure approached this task differently than students who struggle with number sense. The more confident students were very systematic about their approach. They organized their raisins into equal groups of five or ten and were able to count with efficiency and accuracy. The less able students counted one-by-one. They sometimes loss track and had to start again. When a final count was secured, there didn't seem to be a sense of confidence. The counting part of this activity was fascinating! Next, students posted their findings on the SmartBoard. The data was recorded in alphabetical order according to each child's last name. Making any generalizations was challenging. The students were sent off to analyze the data and present it in ways that made sense and were easy to make meaning of. The was a perfect hum in the classroom as the students attended to their task. I didn't pre-teach line plots or bar graphs. It would have been all too easy to announce that we were working with numerical data and therefore the data lent itself to the construction of line plots. How efficient. How boring. The students likely wouldn't have learned much. Kids have to figure out things for themselves. Students presented their representations beginning today. The students critiqued one another's work and noted the merits of each sort of representation. Learning should be meaningful. As the presentations unfolded, students were respectful and attentive to the student-led conversations that followed each presentation. The students were engaged. Our director of technology integration came in to deliver some professional development during our preparation period at our request. He shared an application that would allow our students to use multi-media and green screen technology to produce photos and videos. He gave us a mini lesson (think direct instruction) and then cut us loose with a tiny project. During the practice phase of our lesson, I took a photo of my colleague and tried to place her in a cafe in Paris. She was way too big! I intuitively used two fingers to shrink her and move her. I couldn't help it, I squealed with delight. There is no doubt about it. Technology can be very engaging, even for old bird school teachers like us. We were eager to jump in and work on our mini projects. My key take aways on the day:
Day 109Our students are reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling. Each week we read one chapter aloud. The students, with lots of help from me at this point, brainstorm the major events and ideas presented in each chapter. Then, they select three to five major events/ideas. The students craft a friendly letter in their "Dear Harry," journals each week. This letter, written directly to Harry, gives students an opportunity to reflect on what is happening in Harry's life and in the book in general. They use their letter to exercise empathy while demonstrating their understanding of main idea and supporting details. Over the course of this project, the students' letters show major growth. We offer lessons in anticipation of growth in the following areas:
(Presented in no particular order)
I do not correct these entries. I offer a lot of feedback and oftentimes, students will go into their own writing to make changes. As we get deeper and deeper into the book, I'll begin to remove the scaffolding. No longer will we brainstorm major events/ideas as a class. Instead, students will jot down notes as the text is being read aloud. Each student will have individualized goals. Given instruction, and time to improve their writing, future drafts, marked by little effort or attention to improving their craft, will not be accepted from the students. They will be given countless opportunities to improve their writing in response to teacher feedback. Given the above writing sample it is hard to know where to begin with feedback. I want to affirm and encourage the good that I see. My feedback needs to focus one a major aspect of the student's writing and it should be followed up with explicit instruction. The next feedback the student receives should connect to the initial feedback and the instruction received. Students need to feel they're being held accountable for improving their work. Because writing is so personal, much of writing instruction has to be personalized too. Making space for this kind of personalized instruction is a challenge given the scope of our work and the limited time each day to meet with students. Taking time to know students and to understand their strengths is an important step in meeting their instructional needs and propelling students toward skill acquisition and the mastery of grade level standards in writing. On a positive note, students LOVE writing to Harry. They're engaged in this project and take pride in the product that they are creating. Students don't mind working hard. The final product seems worth the effort to them. I just wish Harry would write back to the students. It seems like a reasonable request given the magical nature of our fourth grade classroom! Here is the first written feedback I've given this student. I will follow up with some explicit lessons in proofreading. I'm hoping that that acquiring a proofreading strategy will make all the difference for this writer. |
Marie McManus BrighamA public school teacher who gets to wonder alongside fourth-graders. Archives
December 2018
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