Blog: Numero Dos
Hello all! Welcome to the second post of my blog. This week we will be focusing mainly on the written aspect of English. Since I am only there on Fridays for three periods, I don't really get to see a lot of the instructional strategies that Ms. R uses firsthand. For example, I guess on Monday, they talked about bullies and what you can do to solve a bullying problem, so they brainstormed as a class. She then had them hand write an essay--or at least, start their essay--on bullies and solutions for fixing the problem. Tuesday, they finished up the essay and on Wednesday, they did a peer edit. Thursday, they typed up their essay in Word and by Friday, they were supposed to enter it into MyAccess to recieve a score. If their essay did not at least recieve a 4 out of 6, then they were supposed to go in and see what MyAccess said needed to be corrected, then keep correcting the problem until they recieved at least a 4. Afte they got a 4 or above, they could submit it to Ms. R and she grades them, since 1) everything is supposed to be read by a teacher and 2) the computer isn't capable of picking up on the more subtle nuances of their writing. Ms. R told me that next week, she's going to present them with another similar problem, then have them brainstorm on their own instead of as a whole class.
Ms. R told me that that is how she does a lot of her projects. She makes it into a week-long class project, then does another similar project next week where they're expected to do most of it on their own. The minimum expectation for the writing projects is to recieve at least a 4 out of 6 points, but preferably higher and the initial assessment is done by the computer through MyAccess and the last one is done by Ms. R who gives them their final grade.
Because of a really cool project that Ms. R gave me to do this week (which I'll talk about last), I didn't get to do a lot of hands on work with the students regarding whether they attempted to use unfamiliar words. I could hear them verbally speaking to each other and two of the more "energetic" boys had this really cool conversation. A was asking why MyAccess kept telling him that he was spelling bullying wrong. D, his best friend, looked at it and was like "Dude, that's because you're spelling bulling and taking off the "y." The word is like 'destroying'- you can't take off the 'y' or it doesn't make sense." I thought that that was such a cool conversation because A was just like "ohhh, yeah, that makes sense" and they continued on with their essay.
Well, about my aweseome project this week! Ms. R told me that about once a month, she has all of her students read aloud to her so she can access their reading level. She has these packets and each student gets one. Every page has about 3 paragraphs on it and it worked out to be 218 words. She wanted me to time them and slyly mark down when they made a reading miscue. What a great way to see firsthand all the things we've been learning about! Ms. R told me that she thinks it's a great activity because 1) you can see how the students have progressed and 2) kids who won't read out loud in front of the class will read out loud till the cows come home if it is one on one setting since as a teacher, they don't expect the judgment they might get from their peers. I started assessing the more confident readers first since it was on a volunteer basis. (I think I could recite these 3 paragraphs from memory now!) The first girl to go was one of Ms. R's more advanced readers, so she read the 218 words in about 1 min 30 seconds with only 3 miscues on the words "burrow" and "ferret." The third miscue was "Fiver," which was the name of a rabbit. After they were done, Ms. R wanted me to go through the miscues with them and talk it out. Burrow often turned into barrow and ferret turned into furret. After having them retry(and with a "it's a long 'a' sound" hint), they realized it was ferret but some of them didn't know what a ferret was. Try describing that to a bunch of 7th graders. I was like "umm, it's long and furry and smells bad..." It's hard!!! Fiver was most commonly turned into "fever" which gave me an awesome opportunity to teach them how to spell fever and how they looked and sounded differently.
As I went down through the students, more miscues started popping up like "inspect" instead of "instinct," "picnic" instead of "panic," "onboard" insted of "on a board" and the times got a little longer though. I think I learned more from the later readers though--it was great to hear from say something wrong like "Fiver climbed over the fench in a picnic," then realize that made no senese, then go back to say "Fiver climbed over the fench in a panic."
So that was week! It was such a good week and I'm really surprised at how much I enjoy these middle schoolers (what is happening to me!!?! I used to be a hopeful die-hard high schoool teacher!). I guess we'll have to see how the rest of the semester goes. One thing I did learn this week that I won't forget: Never leave your coffee around! The kids will try to steal it! :)
Posted in: 7th graders, Assessment, Practicum, Reading, Romig, Writing on Sunday, February 28, 2010 at at 12:20 PM
I noticed the 5th grade students in my practicum were having issues with Ys in -ing words, but their issue was not taking away the Y.
How cool! I love that your teacher is confronting practical issues in her classroom while she is improving their writing. Bullying is a huge problem in schools and giving students the tools to navigate tough situations is something that can be challenging to fit into the curriculum.
In Myaccess does it tell you how to spell the word, or just that it is incorrect?
Gena, I too am finding out that most of the instruction happens at the beginning of the week, which does make sense, but can be frustrating for observers.
My teacher at Romig set the standard for MyAccess scores at 5.5. Some of the students submitted more than 20 times to hit that score, it would be interesting to see how many on average each group submits.
Do you think at a certain point it becomes undermining for students to try so hard to conform to a computerized standard?