Reflection 4/9/13

I think I have finally come up with an overarching question: How can I make the reading block a time where students are working in partnerships and small groups effectively? I believe this question encompasses where my inquiry started and where it has come. I started looking at literacy work stations; I wanted to make them a time of day that was differentiated, challenging and supportive for students. I wanted to make sure it wasn't just busy work. In looking at my work stations, I found that most of them were centered on language conventions. I thew many of them out and brought in new stations that focused on reading--both decoding and comprehension. This included the "Read Together!" station. I noticed that it was too difficult for students to read excerpts from their books in their leveled book baggies and have a partner (who hasn't read the story or chapter book before) summarize, so I gave students leveled, stand-alone reading passages. As they have practiced with these passages and prompts for re-telling, they have become stronger re-tellers (an important 3rd grade expectation). I noticed, though, that because they are able to retell more completely, their partners are not getting practice with giving critical feedback (one of my indicators for success for working in partnerships successfully). Now, I am thinking of switching my focus from the "Read Together!" station to the extension work they are doing for their guided reading books. All my groups are currently reading non-fiction texts and taking notes in some form (lower groups are writing the main idea of each page on a post-it, higher groups are taking notes in a graphic organizer on a full chapter). They are depending on me for feedback, currently, and so I would like them to begin to turn to each other, instead. I'm thinking that they could compare their notes and decide together if they agree (either with the main idea or all the important parts) and if they don't, they can use a colored pencil to revise their writing to match what's happening in the book. I am reluctant to give them actual sentence starters or prompts for the interaction but I do think I'll model it for each group so that they can see what it is supposed to look like. 

Data & Reflection: Early April 2013

I ended up doing only 2 parts of the next steps. I had Alex and I model in front of the class (after practicing a few times together with the passage so that he would feel comfortable going up in front of the class to summarize for them) twice. The first time, they told us what they noticed about the summary and the second time about the feedback. Alex did an amazing job summarizing for the class and they were able to notice that he included all the details, he used the sentence prompts and he used vocabulary from the story (a passage about Harriet Tubman). They also noticed that because his summary was complete, I gave him a compliment and did not need to give him feedback. We discussed the purpose of giving feedback (to improve) and whether or not giving feedback is necessary if a summary is complete. 

The data that I listened to is Ja'Vonny and Alexis. Alexis read the passage and Ja'Vonny retold it. Ja'Vonny was able to use all the prompts to retell the story. One factor I'm unsure of is whether or not Ja'Vonny was able to see the passage when he was retelling. The directions include that the reader should turn the passage over, so that the re-teller can't see it, but at one point it sounds like Ja'Vonny is directly quoting and/or reading from the passage. Alexis uses the prompt "I noticed..."and then tells Ja'Vonny that he used all the prompts but Ja'Vonny tells her "You gotta pick one"--so she back tracks and uses the "I like how you...." prompt and gives him the same feedback about the prompts. Then she asks "What happened at the end?" and there's some whispering before Ja'Vonny says, "I already said that." So she re-words it to, "What happened after?" and Ja'Vonny responds, "What happened after is lightening shoots across the sky."Alexis doesn't respond and then Ja'Vonny launches into reading a new passage. 

I'm still feeling like there's a lack of understanding of the point of feedback (maybe even about what it is, period?). I'm guessing this expands beyond just this work station into the entire classroom--do they understand why I give them feedback on their math or their writing? Can they tell me what feedback is? As a class, their ability to retell has improved but all my focal students seem to struggle with giving meaningful feedback and then internalizing feedback from a fellow student. I'm wondering if the next step is to look into feedback in work stations?