Teaching Sagittarian

As part of our Literacy Contract we’ve been asked to keep a reflection diary on our teaching. My very first thought was if I do this online as part of my blog, then I will actually do it! Here are some questions to help with the reflection:-

Description of teaching

• Tell us about your teaching goal. What have you been trying in your guided reading lesson?
  My teaching goal was to make sure I was explicit to my reading group what the learning intention was.
  
• How did it go? What did and didn’t seem to be successful?
  It was terrible! I was flustered, and I kept bouncing from one idea to another – even though I had a learning intention down in our reading plan book – it was too broad.
  
• How often have you tried this strategy?
  I always use a reading plan book – all our work goes in that book – it includes the learning intention and any other work we have done (might be looking at vocabulary, creating charts etc). It is supposed to help focus us during our reading group time.
• What impact was there on the students? How do you know?
  The students had no idea what they were supposed to be learning, and I know this because they were unable to me what the learning intention was – nor could they tell me how they would know if they were doing it.
  
• What difference do you see in the students’ responses?
  Because I’d not included a less broad learning intention – I hadn’t included a success criteria either. This meant that the students couldn’t really answer the questions I was asking because they were unsure of what it was that I really wanted from them. In fact – because I was bouncing all over the place trying to hard to take advantage of “teachable moments” – I probably didn’t know what I wanted either!! So we were all confused!

Description of learning

• What is the goal for this student?
  Use information from the text to justify my statements or opinions
  
• Tell us about the student’s progress in meeting the goal?
  This is a non-verbal student. Progress so far is extremely slow due to student’s reluctance to share any ideas, thoughts or feelings orally.
  
• What does the running record show?
  His running record shows that he reads at his chronological age, reruns and self-corrects – so is reading for meaning most times, relies on Visual Intial/Medial cues for unknown words, quite fluent, but lacks comprehension – is unable to answer questions or is unwilling to answer questions that are quite clearly in the text, requires an extreme amount of prompting.
  
• How is it different to the last one?
  His reading age has improved, but the lack of comprehension increases as the reading level increases.
  
• What is the student doing/neglecting to do?
  Not looking at Visual Final cue when faced with unknown word
  Refuses to return to the text to look for answers in the text.
• How did the student respond to the comprehension questions?
  Remains silent.
  
• What is the relationship between the student’s reading needs and writing needs? What does the writing show?
  Is a reluctant writer even after lots of oral discussion opportunities and one-to-one discussions with teacher providing lots of prompts. Answers limited to one or two words. Struggles to get ideas down on paper. Final endings of words are often incorrect
  
• What is our analysis of progress?
• What do we think the student needs to learn next?
  Find information in the text
• What changes if any need to be made to the teaching?
  I think I need to work backwards with N***.
  
• What are you going to do next in your teaching?
  Next time I will ask N*** to make a prediction before we read. Then we will discuss what actually happened and discuss whether his prediction was correct or not, then we will look for evidence in the text to support, confirm or alter his original prediction.
  
• How long before you expect to see progress?
  I am hoping that after a week or two of working this way, N*** will be able to answer a question without the prediction first. That he will be able to look in the text without the teacher prompting first.
  
• What support do you need?

Teacher’s Personal Learning Goal: Make sure each learning intention is clear, concise and specific

Success Criteria: How will I know that I have achieved this?
Students will be able to tell me what the learning intention is, why we do it and what it looks like.

Reflection: