> Bonita > I was hoping you would 'bite' and respond to this email! Thanks for your > thoughtful questions. One thing I think I need to make clear about our > lesson > study group before I respond to your questions, we are all on different > grade > levels: K, 1 and below level third.
I think, as you pointed out, teachers getting to see the continuum of student learning through those grades is quite powerful. It would be hard to do a math lesson that would allow for such diversity, but I think reading strategies lend themselves to cross-grade level studies. > ...all except the part where I added > the part about quiet time being needed to maximize thinking. That was > something that was spur of the moment. We are trying not to do too much of > this > spur of the moment stuff...we want to really study the effect of the changes > we > do make and we know if you adjust too much, it is hard to tell what causes > the changes in student learning. Agreed that it is important to try to keep the lesson as it was decided by the group, but I loved your intuitive decision to add the silence part. That happened in our lesson study as well (different intuitive moment--but well received). We added it into the lesson. > My favorite question was from a special ed student reading at the end of > first grade level. He said, "I wonder why he is the sky?" When I asked the > child why he thought that was his best question, he said "it helped his > partner > notice that Grandfather Twilight was making the sunset sky as he walked." > To > me, that shows this child understood not only what was going on, but the > power of his own question in enhancing learning. Did your teacher observers record the student back and forth with this question? Did he, at the time, realize what had happened to his understanding? It sounds like he did--that is amazing! > > I have taught questioning with this book to many grade levels before, and > while I always asked students to share questions, by asking them to share > only their best questions, I feel like we took the focus from the question > to > what the question made them understand...a crucial point, I think and a > definite improvement from other times I have taught the lesson. Funny, that is exactly what Ellin is telling us in To Understand, don't you think? We can entrust children to decipher the difference between valuable use of a strategy and rote-use. So exciting that this worked in your lesson. > My follow up will be further modeling on questions for one group of five > kids out of my 22 students. A couple (2) of these kids were still making > statements...predictions, and while they showed thinking about the text, I > am not > sure they get the idea of what a question is. An example: "I think the guy > is > magical." Others had questions but struggled mightily with justifying why > it > was the best question or the question seemed to be focused on a small but > unimportant detail "Why is the dog going home with him?" Don't you just love how well you know them? You can already determine a flexible group and exactly what they might need after ONE lesson! > And, Bonita, the kids had never seen the book before. That is surprising! I wonder what would happen with the lesson if they heard the story once and then did the lesson with the story? > > And I totally agree with your views on the importance of conscious choices > in teacher language..You could make yourself crazy with it though. I > personally > always struggled with that aspect of lesson study. What about the teachable > moment???What happens when, in spite of all attempts to anticipate how > students > will react, you have the students do something very unexpected? YEs. I had the same response to Choice Words. Sort of froze up for a while. One lesson I observed that was the result of a Japanese lesson study, the teacher had the students solving a complex math problem. Each time students came up to demonstrate their solution, the teacher had a little sign that named the method they had used. The first time I saw that I wondered how the teacher knew the methods that would be used (in advance of the lesson). I have learned that that is what happens when you have performed a lesson enough to really know how to make it rock--you also then know where your students will go with it...though I have great confidence that if a student surprised that teacher in that lesson, he would have been totally excited anyway. Lesson study doesn't mean intuition is not welcome, just that planning for an excellent lesson has huge benefits. > :1 the importance of choosing the right texts for a particular > group of kids 2: the importance of tightening the alignment of the lesson > all > the way through---from motivational opening to closure and 3. The value of > EPR: (Every Pupil Response) techniques to continually monitor student > understanding all the way through. Such important learning that you have now shared with all of us! Although I suspect the learning of your group will far outweigh what we can take away without having done it ourselves! I still think it is great to share out so we can all benefit. > > Thanks, again, for your thought provoking questions. You did a dissertation > on this topic, right??? Yes--on lesson analysis, a related area. We ARE lesson study rookies and were still learning > to improve our process on our fifth round but it has been extremely powerful > learning for us nonetheless. > Jennifer I am so glad you dared and that now you are sharing with the rest of us! :)Bonita _______________________________________________ Understand mailing list [email protected] http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/listinfo/understand_literacyworkshop.org
