Adjustments- the necessity of teaching.

The past two chapters I have read in Fisher and Frey’s, Better Learning Through Structured Teaching, were all about the gradual release of responsibility model, and the first step in this model, the focus lesson.

While observing this last week in my kindergarten placement, I have tried to pick out the pieces of the lessons that apply to this model, and see where the GRR comes into play. However, the more I observe, the more I wonder, can you use the GRR model in a class as young as kindergarten?

At this age, students are still babies. They need their shoes tied, buttons buttoned, and they are still learning letters and sounds. How can we expect to demonstrate new strategies for them, when they need to learn the basics first? It is hard to give them this control, when there is so much they need help with still. Chapter 2, which was specifically about the focus lesson stage, said the assessment could be using an exit ticket to ask questions and see what they have learned. These students have just begun recognizing and copying letters, and are far from being able to answer questions on an exit ticket. Are they too young for this strategy, or does it just need a lot of modifications?

I continued to observe in my classroom, and saw that my mentor teacher is very good with her students, keeping the patience, and asking them questions. I even noticed some think-alouds going on. She was doing a lesson on parts of a book, and she would ask questions of herself like “what order do I think the animals will come in, if the book is called ABC animals?” or “I see that there are quotations, so I must know that someone is speaking in this book”. These think-alouds are smaller version of what was explained in the book, and the thinking is not as advanced as they portrayed it to be, but for kindergarten, it was at a good level, and the students were starting to understand how you would begin to look at a new book, and strategies for understanding the parts of the book, even if they are a ways from reading books like the one they are being demonstrated.  I think that this is in fact a form of the focus lesson, but I never saw it laid out quite as formally as it was in the book.

In Fisher and Frey, they had a definite structure to the focus lesson. A beginning, middle and end, and if these steps were followed, the focus lesson would be complete. I think this is what I don’t see in my classroom. There are think and read-alouds like mentioned before. And there are times when we do hand-writing lessons and the students listen and watch, combining these visual and audio features like the book discussed, and then they practice on their own, however, they do not always happen in this order. We do GRR through out a lesson itself. We use the GRR method when we are writing each letter in each word. The students listen and observe, then they try it. Then we move onto the next letter, and they are back to observing. It does not happen in a whole, where they learn an entire new set of skills to later be practiced, like it did in the book.

Assessment also occurs in our classroom. We do as much partner-talk as we can, with out letting the conversations drift too much, or having certain students take over. We have adjusted to doing a lot of class discussion too. We use assessments like their completed handwriting books, and worksheets to determine what the understood. I think these are all forms of what they spoke about in the book, just modified for our grade and age of students.

I am not sure if I have completely answered my wondering, because I don’t know if this new, adjusted form of GRR is acceptable, or if it has to play out by the book. But like any strategy, and anything you want to use in your classroom, I think that if you can’t adjust it for your students, and what works in your classroom, to get the same results you aren’t doing your job as a teacher, and the strategy is pointless anyway. 

Shaking it up.

This week was my second week in my pre internship, but it was the first in which I felt like I was actually doing and learning. I no longer needed to get to know the students, the classroom, their schedule, or what curriculum they were learning. Now I got to walk into the classroom, jump into the curriculum, take over the lessons, and get the students learning. While reading the Dana chapters assigned to us this week, I read something that stuck with me while I observed my teacher and classroom this week:

"Teachers have for so long had no perfunctory or no influence on school policy, on curriculum frameworks, on time use, on professional standards, - or pretty much anything involving their work experience- EXCEPT in the privacy of their own classroom."

This was a quote by Joan Thate, a researcher, and I used this quote to develop a wondering for this week. My teacher is constantly telling us how she doesn't exactly play by the rules, but gets away with it because she is a veteran teacher, and she simply just doesn't say much, and lets her students' progress speak for itself. My wondering was "how does my mentor teacher's decisions to put in place her own curriculum effect the students' learning?"

I watched this week as me and my partner implemented UFLI training, and my teacher did her own reading groups and centers, which we had not seen in place in the first week we were there. As far as I know, the other kindergarten classrooms were not participating in these same groups, or using UFLI, and I am wondering why more aren't? Is it because they don't work? Or because they are scared of change? My mentor teacher speaks about how she uses a different handwriting program from those of her colleagues, and just does not tell administration when it comes to meetings, because they have been told they need to be consistent, but she likes her program best. She also discusses how she is the only teacher in her grade to use differentiated instruction (such as the literacy centers) and that her colleagues are stuck to the pacing guides and structure that they know. However, I see our students' work and their handwriting is beautiful, and the students I am tutoring in UFLI are already making leaps and bounds in their reading, and it has only been three days. The article talked about how looking past the curriculum, and having your own teaching experience, in the privacy of your classroom leads to isolation, and this is most definitely the downfall I see in this situation.

To address my previous wondering, yes the students do benefit from this new and different curriculum that my mentor teacher has decided to put into place- but has she? She has students who are excelling, and learning, and she is excited about it, which is the ultimate goal and wish for a teacher. However, she has awkward and distant relationships with her colleagues, who should be working together as a team and a support system, and I wonder how hard it is, to actually come to work each day, knowing that you are that odd-one-out, or if it effects her at all?

I think the point of inquiry and the Dana chapters from this week is that inquiry is beneficial, and this precious information you gather should be shared, not hidden away in a classroom because you are too scared to show that you are not following the strict guidelines, or because your colleagues are stuck, and don't feel like making the change.

My goal for the next week is to truly work my UFLI tutoring to it's potential, so and to continue to administer things such as running records, to have proof that a new system can be beneficial to the classroom and these students.

I am left wondering for most likely my entire pre internship, or maybe career, "would teachers benefit from straying from the structure laid out by the district, and in-turn, would their students?"