Reading and Writing Strategies for Non-Fiction Texts- Unit Reflection

The first lesson was creating a concept map based on the vocabulary word Immigration. Students pulled from background knowledge and filled out a concept map relating ideas to the central word. The second lesson was a lesson where I read a book about Immigration into America and students added information to their concept maps after discussion about the text. After teaching this lesson I was able to reflect on my practice. The students I think were successful during this lesson. I think what helped was being able to return to their concept map and add more. Also, I think it helped that they were able to work with partners. This always works well with the students, many of them have said that they just enjoy bouncing ideas off of one another and that it really helps in their thinking about the concept or the task. Some students however decided to work independently and you could see how it had an effect on their additions to the concept map, or lack thereof. These students just say and moped during this time and did not add much to their concept map. I saw that those who chose to work with a partner took the most away from the lesson.
In terms of literacy practices I learned that my students are able to dig deep into their previous knowledge and that helps them during reading-especially in this lesson. I had a great deal of participation when asking students for input. Even students who do not usually participate offered up information when constructing and revisiting our concept map. I think overall students are able to make cross-curricular connections (which is very important in upper elementary).
I will re-teach this material again as we loop back through reading and writing strategies for non-fiction texts. We will see these strategies again as we look at other non-fiction text. At this time I will give more independent work time to those I know can handle it and I will pull small groups for those who had a hard time constructing, adding to or defending their answers from this lesson.
If I were to do this lesson again I would split the reading up into 2 days. The book was quite long and I think lost some of my students because of it’s length. I think I would also follow up the lesson with a different text and have them construct a concept map based on a vocabulary word. They would dig in their prior knowledge to see what they knew and then add to their concept map while they read. I think I would do this with several different non-fiction texts and vary small/large group discussions and independent/partner work. I think that if students practiced more with building vocabulary or even built vocabulary based on looking up the definition and reading about the topic, they would have been more successful on the independent level.

The second lesson I did was about determining big ideas and important details.I was very pleased with the outcome of this lesson. I think that I had so much success because students were familiar with the book and had read it in previous classes. Having the prior knowledge made for a very rich discussion and in-depth thoughts about big ideas, important details and questions to ask to set a purpose for reading. Even my students who tend to shy away from class discussions participated and contributed good dialogue to the conversation. We took a picture walk through the book and came up with questions based on the pictures. We had lots of questions that they produced, several of them were very connected, in-depth and reached the goals of my lesson from the bat. They caught onto the story and ran with it, I was very pleased.
I learned key factors about my student’s literacy practices, and that mostly revolves around having a rich prior knowledge and being able to tap into that during ELA lessons. Students had to understand the context of the book in order to understand the important details, and they were able to draw upon that based on their prior knowledge about the context and the basis of the book. If I were to re-teach I would chose a different text and have them research the context of the book. I wonder how the lesson would have gone if students did not know the context or had background knowledge of the book. I think it taught me that before you dive into a text you should do some research on it to better familiarize yourself with what the book is about-especially with non-fictional texts.
The third lesson was an extension of the lesson before. They were taking what they learned in the previous lesson and applying to an independent writing piece. This involved reading a passage and applying what they knew about determining big ideas and important details.
Most students were able to successfully read a passage and determine the important details and big ideas based on that passage. Students worked hard to gain understanding of the passage and apply in a writing piece. Some students do not thrive when given independent work and thus needed either a one on one or a small group discussion of the topic. These students benefited from oral conversation and were able to successfully determine the big ideas and important details of the passage. I was please with them being able to communicate orally their comprehension of the piece and of the task. I was a little disappointed with what followed though. I thought that if I pulled students in a small group and we all discussed the meaning of the passage and draw big ideas that it would boost their confidence and I could have them try the writing piece on their own. Instead of running with it, students fell back into the anxiety ridden state that they get to when they are asked to write independently. Most of these students want you to sit next to them while they write and check to see if they are doing it correctly. They do not thrive when asked to work independently. I wish I could have thought of something that could have gotten them to work more independently without getting so much anxiety of doing so.
If I were to re-teach this I would find a way that connected those students in a way in which they did not feel anxiety. Similar to students who enjoy playing an education game. They are having fun, so they do not realize that they are actually learning. I would like to think of something that gets them writing on their own where they do not feel so isolated and have anxiety of the independence.
Planning and teaching an entire unit most definitely allowed me to grow as a teacher and as a reflective teacher. I am becoming better at understanding quickly if something is not going right and either changing it or reflecting on what I could've done differently.I am very thankful for this opportunity.

Literacy Unit- Genre Study

General Background: I did my unit on a genre study that mixed Historical Fiction, Mystery and Tall Tales all together. The first ten days, that I used for inquiry two were the introduction to the unit. We started off the unit by creating a KWL chart, then read a book from each genre. We used these books to generate list about the setting, characters, problem, solution and moral from each genre.

Finishing up my unit for my genre study, has left me with mix feelings. First of all, I am proud of myself for being able to create an unit when not a lot of materials were given to me. This is not a striped curriculum like I have been seeing with many other subjects. I was given points that the students had to learn, six weeks to create unit around this. Second, I feel as if there is not enough time in the day to teach all the material that I want my students to walk away from this unit with. With the MEAP, DWA, Fifth Grade Camp, Power Outages and student led parent teacher conferences, it seemed that my unit was very inconsistent on when we did the lessons. Also, it seems that we will never get to all of the material because there is ALWAYS something that is coming up (I hear this will be an issue for all teachers!).

I was thrilled with the response of flip-chart and character-setting drawings. All of the fifth grade teachers asked for copies of this lesson along with the flip chart template. I was glad to see my ideas were being used by other teachers. Also, I felt that it showed that I was planning and trying to put a lot of thought into my lesson.

While writing their own Tall Tale, was a great idea and my teacher thought I had a great plan, we figured out we would not have enough time to go through the entire writing process. (Originally, my goal of this lesson was for students to play around with tall tales and see if they can get that deeper understanding of what a tall tale is). While I think the lesson still went well, I was worried that the students were rushed and did not have enough time to dig deep into the genre. When doing this unit again, I would wait until the end of the six weeks to think about writing a Tall Tale. I think my some of my students may have had a hard time because they were still unsure what a tall tale is. Also, next time I will have my students do research and online activities (if the school will allow it) to help the have more hands on experience with the books.

While my unit went well, there were a couple of things that I was not expecting. I was not expecting my students to struggle with note-taking without any lines. They were writing too big or too small and running out of room. On the first day of using the flip-book, this took away from the students learning the materials. Also, after ten days of taking about these three genres I found the students were bored and ready to move on. While the flip book is a great organized way of holding the information, the lessons were very similar. Next, time I would try to condense some of these lesson so the students would not become 'bored'. I also found that some students that their favorite genre is mystery, so when we were filling out the chart they had the most to contribute to mystery. I should have taken more time to read more examples of Tall Tales and Historical Fiction so the students had a better base knowledge before we started filling out the charts.

Lastly, while I love the idea of a genre study, however, I found that studying three genres was hard for many students (this is how my school district has this set up). The lesson became long when we had to cover three different genres in one day. We would spend just one day talking about the characters of the three genres. Even if I could cut the conversations down to eight minutes a genre, it would still be a twenty four minute mini-lesson. This did not leave enough time for the students to explore reading or writing about the genres, outside of note-taking. Also, I felt that many students were confusing the genres because there was so much information to think about.


Answering the Questions:
I felt that the students struggled with the genre of Tall Tales across all three of my lessons. Many students were not sure what the genre really consisted of. So I can across that digging deep was hard for them. My students also struggled and worried about the picture they can to draw that combined character and setting. They were so worried about how it would look instead of the important aspect of the project.

My alternate reads for my students work was I was surprised by how they struggled with note-taking. This is a skill we are working on for sixth grade. I thought when they had the boxes and the information on the board, this would have been a great modeling of organizing their data. However, the students struggled with how big to write, their writing wasn't neat because there were no lines. Or there were too man notes and not enough room. Next time, I will teach a mini-lesson on strategies on note taking with this kind of set up. I think this will help the students and not have the lesson get away from my main point.

I was amazed by how well my students did picking apart the genres. They did a great job of reading one book to guide their thinking about an entire genre. Also, they did an awesome job of listening to a story Casey At Bat to guide their thinking about writing their own Tall Tales. I was surprised about how many of them were able to pick up on idea of Today's Tall Tales.

As for re-teaching any of the materials from my lessons, we are going to spend the next four weeks working on the genres, character, setting, problem, solution, moral and theme in my classroom. The students will revisit the material, write more from the genres and read many more examples. For the next four weeks, we read aloud a picture book from one of these genres as well. The students are also ask to read one chapter book from these genres during silent reading time.

If I was going to teach the same lessons again, I would change a couple of things. I would change studying three genres at one time. Also, I would change having the students write their tall tale piece in the middle. I think I would change the mystery writing piece and the Tall Tale Writing piece because I found the students had more background knowledge about mystery than Tall Tales.This will help students to become exposed to more Tall Tales and I think their writing will improve because of this.

All in all, I really enjoyed teaching my unit!