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Over the past two weeks the 9th graders in Mr. DuBe’s English class have been working on essay writing. This past week they were focused on peer reviewing and revising their own papers to be able to turn them in next Monday. For many this was the first time writing a five paragraph paper and for others it came easier than other.
Objectives: Based on the lesson from Wednesday or Friday for second hour, 3 main objectives for the class was 1. Being able to write about a character from their independent reading 2. Implement peer’s revisions to their essay and 3. Identifying what sections students wanted help on in their essay, since they were also getting help from tutors (me being one of them).
Warm Up: The class started off by doing their daily writing warm up. That day it was a reading journal were they got to write about a character in their book whom they admired and their reasoning. Their writing warm-ups I assume are to get the juices flowing and get students writing before starting their actual assignments, like the essay.
Motivational Strategies: In terms of motivational strategies used for 2nd hour, they mostly seem to be intrinsically motivated to do well in class and on their assignments. From the two classes I tutor, 2nd hour seems to get their work done most of the time. Another motivation is probably that Mr. DuBe reminds them that the essay deadline is coming up on Monday and if they don’t want to be working on it over the weekend, they should get as much done in class. When I was reviewing and suggesting edits for 2nd hour, a lot of them had well developed five paragraph essays.
Activities, Closure, & Follow-Up:
The class started off with 8-10 minutes of their reading journals and then moved to 25-35 minutes of working on their essays, identifying what they want feedback on, as the tutor for revisions, and revise their essay based on suggestions. Class is usually structure based on two to three chunks of times, but it seems like students are used to this structure by now. This struggle is successful for some students, like 2nd period who seems to be very intrinsically motivated, but first hour has diversity in the way students learn. It is very easy for students that need extra one on one help to get distracted in these large chunks of classes. Also when students received feedback, they had to line up with a tutor, however what about the students that don’t work well with the pressure of having students waiting on them to be done with feedback.
When class ends, there is no real conclusion, it’s mostly the bell because Mr. DuBe makes sure to run through everything the 9th graders should know at the start of class. When he begins class he lets students know of the deadlines and what is expected of them by the end of class. The follow-up also happens in the beginning, as Mr.DuBe prefers to have his students know and be aware of what will happen after class at the start.
Other Observations
Last week was really rough helping a student named Tristan on his essay. However, this week I was working with him on his essay and he was having trouble visualizing his essay so ended up breaking down his second body paragraph into a diagram. I started off by writing his body paragraph topic in one section and drew branches to symbolize his two examples. It looked like it helped him figure out each paragraph separately. It has made me realize how many students prefer to visually see big abstract projects in pictures rather than a written outline. I hope to incorporate this finding in my lesson plan. (I hope to use something like the picture below).
This past week I’ve also noticed the difference between first and second period. It seems like there are more students that are behind and maybe don’t have the same intrinsic motivation that students in second period do. This is just an observation I have made, which has also affected the way Mr.DuBe interacts with each class at times (not always).
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Clarissa, I really like the observation you made about how some students prefer visual aids when trying to do something like writing an essay. My brain definitely can appreciate a map to help lay out concepts, and I think for some students visualization is really difficult unless they have a physical aid. It makes me wonder about development and whether schools are doing enough to teach younger students the structures that they need to remember and implement for later usage. You would think that visualization would be harder for younger students and come easier/be less necessary for older ones, but that doesn’t always seem to be the case.
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Clarissa thank you for your very insightful blog. I really enjoyed reading about the activities in class that you observed and helped out in. What an interesting photo you included as well. A couple takeaways that I want to touch on after reading your piece involves the abstract outline and the warm up activity. It always helped me as a student learning to write to use templates that I could visually see how paragraphs connect. I wonder what it is about these templates that seem to help most students because it is a visual trigger but most kids, like me struggle with visual learning. Why is this an exception? Also, the warm up activity you mentioned where the students write about a character in their book every day to get the juices flowing. Does this warm up activity ever connect directly to something later in the day plan or is it just a way to get the kids in writing mode? I wonder if it would be more effective to make the students warm up by writing their goals of the day? That could get the students focused on the days work and warm up their brains.
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