TheVirtualProtocolStep VI. Discussing Implications for teaching and learning
- The facilitator invites everyone (the participants and the presenting teacher) to share any thoughts they have about their own teaching, children’s learning, or ways to support this particular child in future instruction.
mplications are fleshed out when the facilitator asks the whole group (presenting teacher included) to reflect on the ideas generated by the discussion of the piece. These might be reflections about specific next steps for the child in question, or ideas about what the participants might do in their own classes, or thoughts about the teaching and learning process in general.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Facilitator: Now, remember Brenda's question to us. She wants her students, including Miguel, to be better writers. So what kind of conversation can we have to take some of what we did see and use that to help her? So, Brenda, why don't you start us off in the conversation and then we'll start talking about what she could do here given what we perceived, including some interesting things she hadn't seen.
Brenda: This story flowed but again it was flowing because of the "ands" and "so's," but he didn't know he had written a sentence, and how to really phrase his questions properly so he can realize that I'm at the end of a question. Capitalization of letters in the middle of words or at the beginning of words... Actually it's just one thought, it's just one continuous thought. Notice the punctuation comes at the end, "if it happens again"--he just took it and just rolled with it as fast as the story came to his head. He was in a rush just to get it all down before he forgot what it was all about. And even though he answered the who and the what so forth, he answered it in such a way, that this is what you want to know so this is what I'm telling you, and I met the criteria, so to speak, about what you were asking me for. So he needs to know how to write a complete sentence and when to stop the sentence; how to begin another sentence, and yet keeping the flow.
Brenda: He got proficient from me based on what others had done. The "ah-ha's," that came for me after listening to you critique his paper. I wish I had presented the NP (non-proficient) because as much as I got from this, I would have gotten a better answer to my question had I presented the NP.
Brenda: The writing skills we go through are about the writing process. There are stages of the writing process that you use with the kids and all year long I've used the writing process in as many possible ways that I can. We do a lot of book reports, we do writing every day, they do journal writing, I give them writing prompts. After they have written it they have to read it out loud, they have to make sense of it, they share with each other. We go through all of the mechanical skills that go into the writing; the punctuation, the grammar, the capitalization.
[The group discussed some possible teaching approaches, for example:]
Participant: When I look at this and the kinds of issues about how you want him to improve, Brenda, I'm wondering if he has ever had to do that with his own work. I mean, for instance, if I were going to sit down with Miguel and help him work on when to stop the sentence and start a new one. I would probably give a different color pen and ask him to go through and mark and show me where his sentences end. It might very well be that he said that he ended the sentence every time he started with an "and" in which case he does know what a sentence is and then we're talking about a different issue with him, in terms of helping him to drop the "and" and to capitalize the beginning of the next sentence.
Participant: I'm just wondering if one of your approaches has been language experience stories with the entire class where they give you a sentence to begin the story. Then you write the story for them and they build on that until they have a complete story.
Facilitator: I think all of the errors that you see are all out of intelligence. There's a lot of intelligence in the errors that he made and sometimes I think that kids writing, if you can identify the intelligence of the error then you can help them fix it. I keep going back to the string of "ands". He knows he needs to start something new. He's using the "ands" to link ideas. I see a lot of intelligence in these mistakes.
Participant: What you are doing with this third grader is exactly what I am doing with my ninth graders and I'm having these same issues. Bravo for working as hard as you are and these kids will eventually get it. Look at how far Miguel came from the beginning of the year until the end. On the punctuation, I did an exercise with my ninth graders but it worked with them cause they're hormonal and they love doing things like this. We read aloud and every time we found a period we took a breather and I didn't realize it was going to get like this [everyone laughs]. If he reads it out loud to you he will naturally pause and when you pause and you say oh, your pausing. He'll know that's a place to start a new sentence. They have to learn to read to themselves in their head in order for them to do that too.
[After some more discussion, Brenda came back to the point she made earlier.]
Brenda:That's why I said after I listened to what you all pulled out of this, I wish I had presented the NP because it's a vast difference or maybe I should show it to you later if we have time and you'll see what I am talking about. I mean I was actually proud of myself for listening to you all screen it.
Facilitator: You should be.
[Participants applaud.]
Participant: There was learning that happened for Miguel and you probably brought him to a large step to his life and now he's got to take the next step and you need to figure out that you cannot do it all for him. But you've brought him to this point.
Participant: It would be really good to conference with Miguelto point out how far he came, maybe share some of the notes you got today of all the positive things we noticed. Say, "this is how far you've come. You know you made tremendous progress and now what do you see or do you see anything that you could possibly work on, because writing is work in procss, it shouldn't just end with this assessment."
Step I | II | III | IV | V | VI | VII
