Writing Reflection - Kristina Williams

The objectives for my lessons included:
(1) – Students will create a narrative with a bold beginning by writing a Halloween story, using one of the seven types of bold beginnings.
(2) – Students will develop a mighty middle by writing a timeline story of their lives, using at least three middle details
(3) – Students will use conventions when writing a narrative using correct punctuation, capitalization, transition words, and details.
(4) – Students will use the writing process to draft and write a story.

In my lessons, students learned how to apply the bold beginnings they had been learning about the week before and they also learned and practiced developing a mighty middle. Students practiced through my mini-lessons using transition words and identifying strong beginning, middles, and ends. There were various students who struggled with the lessons. In particular, it was mainly the students with IEPs. These two students have not been a part of our literacy lessons until just a few weeks ago, when they were put in our class full time. These two students tell their stories more through pictures, and neither have the speech and language to verbalize to me that they understand and are applying the objectives.

Using the Halloween stories for application of bold beginnings was a perfect way to motivate students! Every single student has a bold beginning in their stories. For some, it took some conferencing to get them there, but overall, they showed understanding of them and how to use them.

Based on my students’ writing, I realized that they really have a good understanding of bold beginnings. The thing they struggled the most with is the capitalization and punctuation. We are now working on revising and will soon be working on how to edit so I know that this is very developmental. But it makes me realize the importance of focusing on these things. They also do not all have a complete understanding of sentence structure. So, I now know some of the things we really need to work on and that I can incorporate into mini-lessons. I also noticed that the majority of my students are writing fairly clear beginnings, middles, and ends. So, I have realized that the BME drawings that they have been doing as planning since the beginning of the year have really been beneficial! There were only three students who did not have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Another thing that I was able to witness was how engaged the students became with my lessons. Writing a Halloween story and writing about themselves were things that they easily got into. Making things personal and entertaining for students with various interests was a great way for students to become actively engaged and show effort.

Writing was something scary for me to begin teaching because there is less of a curriculum to follow. However, I was very pleased with the results of my lessons and the mini-lessons that I came up with. One that my mentor said she was really impressed with was where students worked as tables to find transition/temporal words in magazines and cut and paste onto posters. After they did this, they not only showed a much better understanding, but were excited to use the posters to help with their writing.

There were some things that I learned about my students’ literacy practices that extend beyond my objectives. One of the things I found most interesting was the way one student formatted her paper. We have them put Xs on every other line so that they skip lines and are able to go back later to revise and edit. She does this, but starts each new sentence at an “X” and usually the sentences go on to the following line on the paper. While this doesn’t leave much room for revisions, she is the only student without any capitalization or punctuation errors. By putting each thought, or sentence, on a separate line, it helps her remember where to put periods and capital letters. I will need to go back and re-teach her how we “wrap-around” when we write, but it thought this was a very interesting step in her process.

Based on the performances of students, I realize that they still need a lot of practice with capitalization and punctuation. I plan on creating mini-lessons that involve these and they will be taught to everyone – not just the students who are struggling the most. These things come with practice and no student has completely mastered it yet, which is to be expected. I do not think that there is anything that necessarily needs to be “re-taught,” but instead everything that I taught needs to have continuous emphasis because students need the opportunity to practice and apply. I think one mini-lesson needs to be about the different types of bold beginnings. Most students are relying on onomatopoeia because it was the most fun when they learned it and enjoy including it in their stories. However, there are many times that other types of bold beginnings are more appropriate.

If I were to teach these same lessons again, I think the biggest thing I want to change is conferencing and publishing. These are two very time consuming things which make it difficult to assist students with questions or to help guide students who are struggling. I ended up taking most of their Halloween stories home to type out, but there are many which I need them to read them to me because of their writing. I think that next time I would try to come up with an assignment or activity to do the day after they finish writing that they could do more independently. This way, I could call them one at a time to come to the computer for publishing. I also read in our “Writing Essentials” book that a teacher had a parent volunteer come in the day of publishing so that the teacher could still be available for students as they are working and keep monitoring students’ performance and progress. I think that this along with group conferences would be beneficial to students learning. I am planning a new writing unit where students do more sharing and we “celebrate” their writing more. I think I would want to incorporate this into this lesson if I were to teach it again because I am seeing the benefits of sharing student work because they can all learn from what their classmates are doing and my suggestions and comments to them.