Lauren Ghelfi- Lesson 1 Reflection

 I was extremely nervous going into the lesson today, because I not only taught writer's workshop, but I also stepped in to teach everything due to the fact that we had a substitute. Overall, I feel that the majority of my students understood the purpose of this lesson. Not only was I trying to get students to understand what the Good Qualities of a Small Moment story are, but I was trying to focus on my core practice which was shared writing. Today's lesson was all about sharing your writing with your partner and celebrating what you did well. When I first dismissed the students they seemed confused on what I was asking them. Many of them thought they were going to be writing today, and I should have been more specific that we were just reading our writing today. 

As I walked around in groups I noticed that many students needed to be directed in following the steps of the partnership procedure. Many of them did not understand that first they were either listening or sharing, and then they switched roles. This is something I could have done differently by asking a student to state what I said in their own words. Making sure they knew exactly what they were doing before we broke off into partner groups. 

One of the things that I feel hindered the partnerships today was the lack of completed small moment stories by the students. Students who have not completed small moment stories could not really share a completed piece. Their partner then seemed unsure of what to compliment on. I should have been more clear on complimenting on what they have completed, not just IF something was completed. 

I learned that a the ones who did have completed stories had multiple completed stories. I was actually very excited to see that partners were able to share multiple stories and give compliments on more than one. They were also able to compare the stories and say what they liked that someone may have done in both stories. One thing that I thought was especially great that extended beyond my objectives was one of the students complimented his partner on her use of thought bubbles in pictures. We actually have not gone over thought bubbles only speech bubbles. I thought it was interesting to see that this student had picked up on these from another story and included them in her own story to create a good small moment story. 

One thing that I will continue to work on is explaining the steps to partnerships. A few groups were not taking turns and were not paying close enough attention to their partners stories. So when it came time to compliment their partner, they forgot what the story was about completely. For the few students that this happened to, unfortunately I was not surprised. They tend to need more guidance than others when it comes to stretching their thinking further. 

If I were to re-teach this lesson again, I would ask my MT, or in this case the substitute to pretend to be my partner when modeling the activity. I felt that students were distracted by the Moose puppet. Although I thought it would be fun for the kids, it was too distracting for them and I do not think I was able to implement the partnership procedures as well as I would have liked.