3rd Grade-Paragraph Writing

What students learned and which students struggled with the lesson?

The basis of my unit plan was for students to be able to write 2 4-paragraph essays using detail. The second day of my unit plan was a lesson on writing a paragraph specifically on dogs. During this lesson, the students and I first brainstormed ideas about what we knew about dogs. We then looked at a dog fact sheet. I first read the sheet with the class and then I re-read the facts with the help of my class. As we read the facts sheet a second time, the students were to highlight facts that they thought were interesting. As extra help I modeled how to find the interesting facts by highlighting my own facts. After looking at the dog fact sheets, as a class we created a topic and closing sentence for our paragraph. The class was provided with a hamburger graphic organizer to fill in their ideas. After completing the graphic organizer (including a topic, 3 details from the fact sheet and a closing sentence). Through the lesson my students learned how to pull information from an informative text and write about those facts. Students also learned how to correctly fill out a graphic organizer and write a short paragraph. Many of the students had no problems with filling out the graphic organizer, however, when it came to transferring the information to a piece of lined paper there were a lot more questions. Even some of the best writers in my class had a hard time indenting their paragraphs. There was confusion on how we only needed to indent one time, not 5 times for each part of our graphic organizer. I have many students in my class who struggle with writing, even just printing letters. The lesson was at too fast of a pace for them to keep up with the writing with the rest of the class. In order to help these students I modeled all of the steps and even gave some students to even copy some of the details that I used in order to make it easier for them. I was surprised with how many students were struggling with the simple concept of indenting the paragraphs; it was an unexpected turn in my unit plan.

What are alternate reads of your students’ performance or products?

I was originally concerned after teaching this lesson because the students have been working on paragraph writing for weeks, so I was not prepared to have to scaffold so much of the paragraph. The class had already learned how to indent, but they still struggled greatly with indenting one paragraph. The students excelled at creating topic sentences, detailed sentences and closing sentences. The class had been working on constructed responses to prepare for the MEAP where they practiced writing the different types of sentences. This extra practice with constructed responses made it easier for the students to come up with good topics and supporting details.

What did you learn about your students’ literacy practices that extend beyond your objectives?

I learned that it is much easier for my students to write about a topic that they are familiar with. The students had so many great ideas of how to write their paragraphs and what they would like to write about. All of the students wanted to contribute ideas and this let me know as a teacher that the students were engaged and ready to work. I also learned that the students enjoy research. Having the students look up their own facts from the fact sheet gave them the freedom to write about anything they wanted staying within the requirements of the teacher. I also learned that my students need help with the basics of writing, such as grammar, punctuation and spelling. The majority of my students had the hardest time with these topics. I was not prepared to have to do a mini-lesson on the basics of these concepts as well as a paragraph.

When and how will you re-teach the material to students who need additional support?

For the students who need additional help, I have placed them in a table group with students that are willing to provide help if I am not available. I also taught an additional mini-lesson on how to write a paragraph and what I am looking for in a good paragraph. This hopefully helped the students who were struggling the most. I also worked with a small group of students in the back of the classroom while the rest of the students were writing their paragraphs. I helped these students by telling me what they wanted to write before actually writing it. This way the students could get everything they were thinking out of their heads so they were more focused on writing. I also plan on modeling each day on the ELMO my own paragraphs for the students to use a guide with their own paragraphs.

If you were to teach this same lesson again, what would you do differently and how do you think the changes would improve students’ learning?

If I were to teach this lesson again I would first begin the lesson by showing the students a paragraph. I would ask them to create a list of what a paragraph had. This way the students would have had an example to look at before writing their own. The paragraph would be on the same topic that the students were going to be writing about, giving them a good example. I would also have a discussion about why we indent the paragraphs. I believe the reminder of what paragraphs consist of would create less confusion when it came to teaching the lesson. I would also add to the list on the board of what I was looking for in each paragraph. This way the students would be provided with their expectations for the day. The list would include more details, such as a point for indenting and a point for having their name on their papers. This is the process that I continued after I taught this lesson and it worked very well.