Teaching Writing: Take 2

After teaching my first writing lesson, it was obvious that I needed some more practice. For my five day unit plan, I decided to take advantage of my teaching time and attempt another writing lesson. Overall, my two day writing lesson went very well! My unit revolved around the diversity of my students. Interestingly, over half of my students were born in a country other than the United States and have been residents of this country anywhere from ten years to two months. I wanted to embrace this uniqueness by learning about five main countries through various subjects. I used two writing days as a chance for students to educate their peers about life in their home countries. The following describes my successes as well as points of improvement in my lesson.

• Time: In my first lesson, I really struggled with how to teach less to let my students write more. Thankfully, I showed great progress in this lesson! One the first day, I explained that I wanted the students to teach their classmates about themselves and their home countries through their writing. I read a first grade level book that dealt with a Chinese-American girl and how her family celebrates the Fourth of July. At first, I thought these fifth graders would not benefit from a simple book, but they all seemed interested regardless. Plus, their comprehension helped with understanding how to response in their writing. Then, I read my personal response to the book exemplifying what I intended for them to do. I gave them the rest of the period to write, a total of forty minutes. My focus lesson wasn’t twelve to fifteen minutes, but it still gave my students amble time to write.

• Sharing: Parts of sharing time went really well and other parts did not. Luckily, the students already had plenty of practice with sharing their writing so this aspect of my lesson did not cause too much anxiety. However, the way their peers commented did not go as planned. In the past, their sharing time consisted of structured critiques by the teacher and the student’s peers. Instead, I wanted the students to comment on the content of their peer’s works that they learned more about each country. They were to ask questions relating to the content of their writing. Plus, each student had an assigned partner. I instructed each student to write a fact about his or her partner to be placed in a large data chart compiled during the week. At first, the students really struggled with asking questions. Some would not ask any questions, some would make irrelevant comments, and some would resort back to their previous sharing procedures. After a lunch break, I reiterated my expectations and gave a more specific example of what I wanted the students to do. Thankfully, they became more engaged and more focused for the remainder of the sharing period.

• Individual Students: Some students really excelled and thoroughly enjoyed this lesson. I asked the class to bring in something from home to help teach their peers about their culture if they desired. A few of the Korean students took advantage of the opportunity to show their Korean schools’ website on the Smart Board as well as some of their written language. However, one particular student outshone the rest. This Indian student seemed empowered by this opportunity to share with his classmates. He wrote a three-page front and back informational piece on how India gained its independence and passed around pictures of Gandhi and several rupees. The class found his knowledge very interesting and really appeared to learn a great deal about India.

• Assessment: One of the greatest difficulties I encountered was my lack of assessment. I knew what I wanted my students to do, but I realized that I didn’t exactly know what I was specifically assessing. I knew I wanted them to “response to literature,” but I did not know what entailed a quality response. My Indian student worked very hard on his project, but did he really respond to the literature, or did he just write on his own prompt? Also, I was assessing whether or not students could ask relevant questions regarding a piece of writing. Unfortunately, I did not monitor who asked questions very appropriately. Some students only asked one question or none at all. How do I give my students a grade if I do not if they retained the information?