Inquiry 3

Step 1 My literacy units main objectives were to have students use proper punctuation, capitalization, and approximate spelling in their writing. I modeled how to use all writing concepts while the class and I co-wrote a short silly/scary story. After my 10 day unit my

Priscila Fojan

students are not able to go back in their writing and make sure that they are putting periods at the end of their sentences, capitalizing the first letter of each sentence, and are sounding out unfamiliar words. I was not able to collect many post assessments of my students since my placement was moved before I was able to gather much information. I was able to hear all my students scary stories aloud while they presented them in front of the whole class. I know many of my students improved in their writing by using the editing process because many didnt use periods or capitalized correct letters at all during their first silly story and by their scary stories I noticed a great improvement. [No Title] My Older Brother ate 5 horses! and he became fat! he kept on eating! and he became so fat he couldent eat. and he kept on eating and he kept on eating intill one day he blew up! The end. The OOOG BOOG! It was a scary dark and stormy night. And I heard something comeing from the basment I told my sister. And me and her went to the basment to check it out. We took a flash light so we can see. We went down the creeky basment steps. And right there by the frnese there it was the most scary OOOG BOOG it jumpet out and tryed to eat me and my sister but then I took a broom and I hit it in its face. It got very very angry! And then it tried to attack me. But I jumpet out of the way. And I snuck up behind it. And I hit it on its back and it turned around and I said BOO and it ran away quikly and never came back again. The End. The two stories above were written by the same second grade student. The first story was her silly brother story that was written during the first week of the unit and the second story was her scary story that was written during the second week of the unit. By comparing the two

samples I was able to notice that the student capitalized the first word of every sentence in the second story and the same was not true for the first story. I also noticed that the student used more unfamiliar words in the second story by sounding out the words. In both pieces of writing she used punctuation but she has a tendency to start all her sentences with the word and. That would be something I could of worked on with the students during the next unit since she was not the only student who used many ands in their stories. Step 2 While I noticed the students learning how to incorporate what I modeled repetitively into their own writing I was noticed the students doing more then what I asked of them. In the stories in step 1, the student used a title in the second story like all the other students. For some reason the scary stories were given titles while the majority of the silly stories were not. I feel this occurred because the students were actually able to finish the scary story and thus they felt it required a name like all the stories we read. All my students scary stories were also much longer then their silly stories and this is due to the amount of time they were given to write their silly stories (2 days) and scary stories (4 days). The scary stories also included more substance in the sense that they had more descriptive words and a better story line. I feel that since my students were given time to edit they were able to expand their ideas for their stories. While the class was writing their scary stories I modeled how to make a story more interesting and many of the students took what I said and made their stories come alive. I didnt intend to be demonstrating descriptive words, but my students asked questions and I answered them. The funniest example was when one of my students had a sentence that read and she saw a skeleton and she ran away and I wanted to show her that if I saw a skeleton in the park while I was jogging I wouldnt just run away I was be screaming and

running really fast. I even demonstrated the scene with me jogging in the class and my frightened reactions to the imaginary skeleton I saw. My demonstrations were able to show the students the importance of those descriptive words. Step 3 My literacy unit fit within the writing workshop curriculum. They students wrote silly stories the first week and a scary story the second week, but our main objective was to have the students use proper punctuation, capitalization, and approximate spelling in their writing. I was expected to follow the scripted curriculum and I didnt feel I was able to tweak it much at all. I tried to add my own idea for students to make a class story book with a picture to go along with their writing. It was easy teaching the material since everything was already scripted for you, but an hour wasnt enough time to actually do their lessons. The curriculum planned what you had to do each day, but it was always way too much to do. I went along with the schedule, but had to cut many things short which I would of given an extra day to do. I wonder how much time the people who create the curriculum actually think we have to teach writing. I wasnt able to truly overcome my obstacle since I truly believe I should of extended many of the lessons during the first week. They had to write 2 silly stories in the first week and I would of preferred they write only 1 and then we could focus more on the editing process since it will show the students their errors and how to correct them. The second week was a lot easier in regards to time management. I made little stars with the students numbers on them so I wouldnt be calling on the whole class when I asked a question. Also the curriculum had the students only write 1 scary story that week and focused on adding descriptive words to their writing. We also were able to focus a little more on the editing

process. I do believe I should of tweaked the curriculum to better suit my time frame and pace of teaching. I was lucky I didnt have much behavior management to deal with in my class and thus the students were able to get a lot out of my unit. At the end I was proud of how my unit turned out and I have learned a lot with the experience. I was shocked on how many students couldnt come up with a story to write. I would think that students wouldnt have a problem in that regard since they are always coming up with crazy stories. I guess it is different when you have to put it down on paper. In week 2, I was demonstrating how I would react if I saw a skeleton appear next to me in the park while I was jogging so the students could get an idea on descriptive words to add to their writing. I would say that was my aha moment since it really helped the students come up with descriptive words and it made them laugh. In this target area I need to focus on time management and my vowel sounds. It is so hard for me to show a child how to sound out certain words because I lack the knowledge of certain letter combination sounds. You would think someone my age would be a master at this, but if I encounter a unfamiliar word I will most likely pronounce it wrong.

Time Management and Its Effects on Students Learning

between activities within individual lessons and minimizing transition time by preparing students for upcoming transitions (177). During my first experience with teaching writing, I found that writing is a hard subject to manage time between instruction (i.e. teacher modeling proper punctuation) and productive learning (i.e. students writing with proper punctuation). My unit was focused on my 2nd grade students using proper sentence punctuation (i.e. ! ? .), capitalizing proper nouns and first letters of sentences, and sounding out unfamiliar words in several narrative pieces. I feel that with younger students much of the instructional time used is repetitively modeling for the students the concepts we want them to understand. During my first week of teaching writing, the students had to write two silly stories. Most of the hour I had designated for writing was spent reading a silly story, discussing the text, modeling writing a silly sentence or story, and modeling the use of proper sentence punctuation, capitalizing proper nouns and first letters of sentences, and sounding out unfamiliar words with the class. I noticed that giving the students more exposure to the concepts they need to learn can be both beneficial and detrimental since the students are able to visually see the correct ways to write and yet too much modeling takes away from the time the students can actually be practicing writing on their own. My time spent modeling became detrimental to my students learning how to properly write using all the concepts I was modeling. One can only learn so much by watching, they need to actually do it to fully understand all that they witnessed. Another mistake I made in my writing unit was not allowing the students to continue their writing before continuing on to another piece of writing. During week one, the students were to write silly animal sentences on Monday then a silly animal story on Tuesday. The majority of my students were not able to complete their silly animal story on Tuesday and yet on

Wednesday I continued on to introducing silly brother/sister stories. I was more focused on keeping the flow of the unit instead of noticing that it would be more beneficial if we focused on one narrative piece this week instead of moving onto a second one. At the time I thought that if the students started another narrative piece it would give them more opportunities to use the concepts I have been modeling. I now see that editing their papers would have been more beneficial for the students to correct their own mistakes and notice what they are doing instead of me correcting their papers with pen. Before the second week of my unit I consulted, Elementary Classroom Management again for more insight on time management and stumbled upon the chapter that focused on organizing and managing instruction. It basically outlined my concern on how my students were not able to finish their silly stories and reminded me that creating a finished product gives meaning and purpose to assignments and increases students motivation to learn (216). During week two, the students had to write one scary story and add descriptive words to it. Having the students only work on one story for the week showed me how editing their own work helped them better understand proper punctuation and capitalization in their writing. Also the students were able to practice describing objects and people in their stories to make them more interesting. Below is a comparison of week ones silly brother story and week twos scary story written by the same 2nd grade student. [No Title] My Older Brother ate 5 horses! and he became fat! he kept on eating! and he became so fat he couldent eat. and he kept on eating and he kept on eating intill one day he blew up! The end. The OOOG BOOG! It was a scary dark and stormy night. And I heard something comeing from the basment I told my sister. And me and her went to the basment to check it out. We took a flash light so we can see. We went down the creeky basement steps. And right there by the frnese there it was the most scary OOOG BOOG it jumpet out and tryed to eat me and my sister

but then I took a broom and I hit it in its face. It got very very angry! And then it tried to attack me. But I jumpmet out of the way. And I snuck up behind it. And I hit it on its back and it turned around and I said BOO and it ran away quikly and never came back again. The End. The students were given two days to work on the first story and almost a whole week to work on the second story. If you compare the two stories above you can see the second story is much longer in length. During the second week the students were able to edit their papers and read them to the class. I noticed how excited many of my students were to share their scary stories and how proud they were with their finished product. When assessing the students writing I noticed a great improvement between the students writing between week one and two. The students were able to write a lot more and actually make a story that ended. They also used more unfamiliar words in week two and had fewer errors after the editing process. I was reminded of the writing process from the book, Literacy for the 21st Century by Gail E. Tompkins. During my writing unit I may have not used all the stages of the writing process, but I did use prewriting, drafting, and editing. With prewriting I gave the students the opportunity to write different sentences on their own so they can narrow down the topics they would like to write their story about (53). The students then wrote drafts the next day which gives the students the opportunity to write their ideas on paper and they usually have little concern over capitalization and punctuation (54). Finally on the final two days the students were editing their papers by proofreading to look for and mark possible errors (57). No one is perfect so expecting students first copy of a story to be perfect is just not realistic. They need to be able to go back and reread their writing and notice for themselves what they did wrong. Being able to notice their own mistakes shows me that the student understands the concepts I was focusing on. As a beginning teacher, my word of advice is that the use of effective time management in the classroom is essential in creating a successful learning environment for your students. I

find it imperative that allowing students to finish their writing is as important as the content it contains. So if your schedule tells you to continue on to something else and yet your students have not finished the last writing piece extend your lesson. Your lesson plans are not written in stone, but it is crucial that you make sure not to waste your precious instructional time with transitions, flip-flopping between several activities, etc.

Bibliography Weinstein, C. S., & Mignano, A. J. (2007). Elementary classroom management: lessons from research and practice (4th. ed.). Boston : McGraw-Hill.