Immediately following the lesson, Rachel agreed to reflect about her teaching that day.
Reflection has many definitions in the context of teacher cognition. Reflection involves "a state of doubt, hesitation, perplexity, or mental difficulty, in which thinking originates". This uncertainty is followed by the act of searching to find materials that will resolve this doubt and settle the perplexity (Dewey, 1933).
Reflection, however, is more that "just thinking hard about what you do" (Bullough and Gitlin,1995). Reflective practitioners give careful attention to their experiences and how meaning is made and justified. They analyze the influence of context and how they shape human behavior.
Critical reflection goes beyond the technical aspects of an experience to the personal, ethical, and political dimensions of teaching. Reflection is about social justice, equity, and change. Reflection is inquiry into pedagogy and curriculum, the underlying assumptions and consequences of these actions, and the moral implications of these actions in the structure of schooling (Liston & Zeichner, 1987).
Becoming reflective requires active engagement or consciousness in the experience, and in this case, the act of narrative writing. Reflection requires the ability to analyze and prioritize issues, to use tacit and resource-based knowledge, and to develop a feasible plan of action. Clarke (1995) suggests that reflection is not about a single event in time, but occurs over time as teachers begin to construct meaning for themselves.
| VISITOR: | So the first one is pretty open, it's what happened today? |
| TEACHER: |
Well, I thought that I tried to explain the strategy as explicitly as I could, tying it into the context of the work we're doing around importance and important events. But the active involvement part is where I get to see who's understanding it and, you know, who is going [inaudible] writing. And so I did get a little concerned when I think there were some kids who just - they understood that they were looking for the important part and they're supposed to be developing their story. So I guess that's a good first step but I wasn't sure that they were understanding the idea of the separate actions. However, having Chelsea say hers, I was hoping that would give a better picture for some of the students who were having some trouble.
So I think it'll play out when I look through their books and see. The students I was conferring with were really being thoughtful about stretching out important parts, I thought. |
| VISITOR: | The next question is, what did you see in your writing conferences with students and maybe you could talk [inaudible] more in detail? |
| TEACHER: |
Okay. With Cesaleigh, I was excited because she was really thinking about stretching out a part of her beginning that had to do with her being nervous about [inaudible] and her friend showing her the bear and, you know, reassuring her that i's going to be okay and this is her friend's going to make her feel better. So I was really excited about that. So I think - she's stretching out her story at the important part. So I was glad to see that.
In terms of her specific need, I think she's chosen a deep topic that's broad and I've been trying to help her really focus in, and I'm not sure if I'm steering her too much in one direction, that she doesn't really need to be. Not all stories have to have one focal event. Some stories have a series of events that show the importance. So I'm not sure if I maybe want to find a book that I can use to help her maybe structure her story differently because I feel like I've been pushing her towards this focal point, but maybe she knows the importance and maybe she can show it through a series of events. So maybe that's something I can think about. With Ashley, I was excited to see she's really into using the clue words to try to give her reader a picture of what's going on and pull the reader in. So I was excited to see that. With her I knew that that was a strength of hers so I went in trying to show her something she could do to develop that by [inaudible] with feelings. So I think there might be a little bit of confusion now at the beginning of her piece, that I want to go back in and maybe help her work through, and I know that being the writer and having experienced the story, she sometimes - it's hard to look at it from an outside perspective. And so maybe I want to go into that with her next time a little bit. Vincent, I didn't get to read his piece and I wasn't really planning on having a conference with him but I feel like he's really trying to think through each step. And so I'm glad to see that. I'd like to go back and see his sequence of actions and I think he might be able to provide a little more clarity. He's putting dialogue in and I think he might need to do a little bit more description. I'm not sure where to do go with him right now but I was glad to see that he's trying out the strategy. So that was good to see. And then Thomas, I was really excited about because I was thinking of teaching him a little bit about feeling. But what I was excited about was that he had - he knew what he wanted to do and he knew he had come to the end but he wanted to add in details somewhere and just didn't know quite what to do. And, you know, he's really strong in terms of developing the story already. So it was great to see him really engaged and trying to go to that next step. I think sometimes some of the more fluent writers, like Thomas, they get done very quickly and I don't have a chance necessarily to get to them to be able to support them as they're in the drafting process. So I had read his piece and then I didn't realize how much he had written today. So it was really exciting to see what he had done and get a chance to talk to him about it. And what's great to see is that he is a writer that at this point is able to go back and revise. I know some students at this age are just more, you know, beginning, middle, end, I'm finished. It's really hard for them to understand how to go back in and revise. So it was exciting to see that he has great potential of revision and that even though he is zooming through his stories, he wants to go back to them and he's open to coaching and teaching. And so that was really exciting. I need to think about that. When I was thinking about today's lesson and planning it, I was thinking how he's a student that had just gone through and I feel like, oh, that doesn't give me a chance to go in there and really help them. But with a student like him, it's okay because I know I can go back [inaudible] revision. So that was exciting. |
| VISITOR: | Was there anything surprising about today's events? |
| TEACHER: |
Well, I was pleasantly surprised by the response groups. We've only done those probably a total of one to two weeks throughout the past two months because I usually do them a lot during drafting times. And to be able to sit and listen and see how they really try to help each other, I was really excited about that, and I think they're trying to really be thoughtful in how they're helping. They want to help each other and that was exciting.
I guess just thinking about the variety of conferences I had, it reminds me of how every writer is in such a different place and goes through a different process and has different strengths and areas where they can improve. I guess it's a puzzle that's - that you can figure out but it's exciting that they all kind of - they have their own idea of what they want to do with their story and I'm excited to see that. |
| VISITOR: | Were there any changes that you needed to make in your plan as you went along? |
| TEACHER: | Well, the mini lesson during the active involvement, I think, usually if I don't have somebody share out when they're taking turns with each other, they usually wait until after both partners have shared, or sometimes I don't even have them share out because it just takes up a lot of time. But I think that's something I wasn't planning on doing so I was glad I got a chance to let Chelsea share what she had told her partner. |
| VISITOR: | What will you do next time in writing workshop? |
| TEACHER: |
Well, I do want to look at their writing, since I've only seen a few of their pieces. I'm not quite sure what the majority might need but I'm thinking that we may need to talk about some students needing to get to the important parts. Some of them might be really stretching out those leading actions, getting up to it, maybe a little overboard because I was encouraging that. So I think we might need to talk about where we put our emphasis and how to make those decisions, and that's a really hard task. So I don't know about that one.
I could also go in the direction of using transition words to maybe help them. That's more concrete for them, instead of - I could mention weighing certain parts in different ways but really specifically talking about transition words. We've started to [inaudible] but there is a chart where when we're reading we notice like the transition phrases or words, like a minute later and suddenly maybe talk about how those can really help you with your story [inaudible] so you don't feel like you're stuck in one place and it's time to move it along. So maybe that's something I might do. I think we'll have a couple of more days of drafting before we go into [inaudible]. |
| VISITOR: | The next question was actually, what do you plan to do in your reading time to support your students reading, which you just described. Is there anything else that you can think of at this point that you might do next in reader's workshop? |
| TEACHER: | We're going to continue with visualization and we're also going to begin talking about making inferences and they've already started using the clues in their stories and giving their reader clues. So I'm actually excited because I think I can use their writing to teach about inferring. So you use their writing to teach about inferring feelings, we can teach their writing to show how you infer, you know - I guess to start with, prediction. Like Ashley's is a good example. We can use that to talk about how we can predict using those clues and then maybe go into inferring, talk about character feelings. That's a little more difficult. |
| VISITOR: | And what are your hopes for this class as writers? |
| TEACHER: |
Yes, that question is a big one and I feel like I'm thinking about it a lot because I think about second graders and I think about what my job is as a teacher for their future, and I feel like I want to balance giving them this experience of feeling like authors and getting to write books and getting to feel energized and empowered to share stories about themselves and just love writing, while at the same time, showing them that what they're learning, even in second grade, can help them in all aspects of their academic life, for sure, specifically writing. So when I'm talking about sending a clear message to a reader in - right now I'm tying that to telling the world about yourself because we want them to feel like, you know, they have something important to share, because they do and writing is one way to do that. But in the future, they'll need to write to communicate many different experiences and communicate meaning in different ways. So I think that I - I'm always thinking, is this a lesson that they can take to other aspects of writing now and in the future.
My purpose in this unit was really to focus on, not necessarily putting in all these extra little details like flowery details like special craft moods and everything. It was more to be very focused on what our purpose is in what message we want to send and how to get there and how to be very clear. And coming from first grade, they come with so much in terms of structure of story but also in terms of craft in that writers do choose their words carefully and they choose to write them in certain ways. What I found was that they were having a hard time pulling those two pieces together. And so now that I think about it, my goal was to not necessarily include all that craft but take them backwards a little bit to make the structure stronger, to make the focus stronger so that we could then later add in some more specific details that tie into the focal point of their story and the main idea of their story. So I'm excited to see that there's less extraneous craft, I guess, being used. I feel like they're being more purposeful in the crafts they're using and the details they're putting in. So that's exciting. |