Today I observed for checking for understanding. The teacher played a new game today that went with checking for understanding. The students are working on punctuation. We played a 'scoot' game where the kids get a recording sheet, then go around to each seat in the classroom where there was a punctuation question. They recorded the correct punctuation mark, then moved onto the next seat and question. Next, we gave each student three notecards. Each student had an exclamation point card, a period, and a question mark. Next the students went back to their seats and each one read the sentence left at their spot from the scoot game. The rest of the students had to hold up the punctuation card they thought was correct. It was a great way to see whether or not the class as a whole understood. The only problem was that it took a lot of concentration on observation to see who/how many students were looking at other students' cards before they responded. We made the cards colored depending on which punctuation mark (green for exclamation point, pink for question mark, white for period). This made it easier for students to quickly see which card to put up. While it's a little less 'fun', having cards all one color would decrease this a bit. Or we could have made them all different colors no matter which punctuation mark was on it. In addition, each student had to read the sentence at their seat with the expression/intonation they thought was correct. This wasn't exactly checking for understanding during the lesson, but the students also submitted the sheets they used while rotating around the room. It was good to have a hard copy for each individual student, however there were a few issues with it. First of all, we're quite confident that a few students were copying answers. We also used the answer key to correct it, which was difficult because the students often used a period instead of an exclamation point or vise versa.
This was another kind of weird day. The students had MAP testing this morning for reading, so there was really only one full lesson then activities (one of which was making a mother's day card, and not a lot of checking for understanding was done there). I had an interesting meeting on Tuesday that strongly relates though. We had a PLC grade planning meeting, and the two people who lead them (the principal and a faculty member whose position I am not 100% sure of) started by asking the teachers what formative assessments were. The teachers weren't quite sure, but ended up landing on the definition through reasoning. We were then handed an article called Why Check for Understanding? It was an article talking all about checking for understanding and why it is important. It focused more on checking for understanding between lessons/throughout a unit rather than during a lesson. It was very interesting to hear the teachers' perspectives. It seemed like they were not making a huge point of this. One reason it wasn't strongly on their radar was because of all of the state testing going on (we just had MCA's, and now we have MAP's. They also do OnDemand and at least one other. It's a lot to keep up with!). I thought this meeting goes hand in hand with what I've been looking at. The major difference, however, is that I look for it more throughout lessons rather than throughout the whole unit.
Question of the Day: Is there a memory you
have from your school experience that has influenced your teaching?
There was a moment of hesitation, but then Mrs. L. said "YES!" She went on to tell me all about her second grade teacher who was wonderful. Her main memory of this teacher was that she had a poster on the wall for number of books read. If the students got a certain number, they got a sticker. The prizes got better and better with more and more books read. The one she remembers best was getting a game board. "That's how I got my Sorry game board!" The last prize was for a large number of books. No students got it, but it was to go tubing down the Apple River with the teacher. I think this is so cool! What a great way to get kids excited about reading! Mrs. L. said this teacher turned her into a reader, and now she loves reading. She also said this teacher created her own phonics curriculum (I think it is called Putnik's). She ended up using it in Texas. This seems like an extroardinary teacher, and I'm glad she influenced Mrs. L. so well.
First of all, your questions of the day are really great! I may borrow some to suggest as alternatives to the more boring/redundant prompts in the student teaching handbook. I can tell Jessica especially enjoyed answering Thursday's question--the way you wrote about her response was full of voice. I have one thing to say, though: It seems kind of mean to offer the river rafting trip and then never have any student "earn" it. I was thinking that the big reward at the end of the year was going to be a class rafting trip, something everyone enjoyed after a year of reading. (You know I'm not a huge fan of extrinsic rewards for reading . . . but I understand it's hard to argue with a person's experience and her testimony that this approach turned her into a lifelong reader, one who, I assume, reads for the sheer pleasure of books rather than a big payoff at the end :-))
ReplyDeleteI thought the punctuation game you described in the first part of your reflection was clever, and if you'd been observing for management of materials, you would have had plenty to write about, too. Agreed?