I. Literacy Development Being Taught
      The literacy development that I will be focusing on is character development throughout a story. I will be working with my sixth-grade students to develop the language around character development and the ways other characters, setting, and events in the novel help the character change and evolve as they move through the story. I will be teaching character development providing the academic language required to do a character analysis. Students are already practicing using this language in our warm-ups looking at characters in their independent reading books and additional warm-up questions relating to our focus novel, The Bad Beginning. Students will also analyze selected sentences to understand a character’s mindset as well as how other characters view them. The materials that I am using for these lessons include a list of different character traits, both positive and negative, and a worksheet provided by other teachers in the district. This worksheet is a compilation of quotes from the novel selected by teachers to develop students' understanding of how a writer creates characters. Additionally, I am focusing on these selected sentences to teach students how to cite textual evidence to support their claims and arguments. I will also be incorporating Active Literacy Academy techniques such as status cards, character archetypes, and status lines. I have decided to incorporate the status activities to help explain the status of the children and the adult characters in the novel. 

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II. Student Population

      The class I will be focusing on is my first-period sixth-grade English class with twenty-three students, fourteen girls, and nine boys. The school is a Title I school with a high-needs population and has a 97% of the student population on free and reduced lunch. Within this population there are nine classified English Only, nine Limited English Proficient, four Reclassified Fluent English Proficient, and one Initial Fluent English Proficient. Of my classified English learner students, a majority of them speak Spanish and one student speaks Pashto. Based on my observations and the information provided by my school, 65% of my class would identify as Hispanic or have at least one parent who identifies as Hispanic, 13% Black, 8% of the class would identify as Asian, and the last percentage is even split between white, Persian, and Afghan. 

 

III. Academic Qualities
      The students in this class are fairly engaged in the lessons and participate well respectively. They enjoy answering questions and participating in class discussions. They enjoy the stories that we have read in class and are great at making inferences with scaffolding. Looking at their iReady data, about five students are one to two grade levels behind while the rest of the class is three or more. The area where they struggle the most is vocabulary and comprehension of literary and informational text. Through my informal formative data collection, I have noticed that most students demonstrate literary comprehension which is maybe two grade levels behind. Students are strong in their speaking, though they do not enjoy presentations. Most of the students are reading a level or two below grade level but all students do enjoy reading. We do independent reading and have warm-ups where students demonstrate their comprehension of plot elements, characters, and settings. In addition to class discussion, these warm-ups are where I have collected much of my data. This is also where I have noticed that many of my students are struggling with their reading. Many are choosing books from my personal classroom library and our online library through Epic! that have lower Lexile levels. Despite these lower reading levels, my students do enjoy the independent reading time at the beginning of class. The areas of concern for me are their writing and their literary comprehension, specifically character development through the characters' responses of the plot moving forward. Focusing on their writing skills, many students struggle with spelling and writing complete sentences. My students have good ideas and can explain their understanding in a general sense but sometimes struggle with keeping a clear focus on their topic throughout their sentences. Focusing on their literary comprehension, students have demonstrated a broad range of knowledge. Many students need a lot of scaffolding and support while others do not. 

 

IV. Long-Term Goals
      The long-term goals that I have for my students based on what I have described above include working with my students to develop their inference-making and close reading skills in addition to helping them understand writing skills in addition to their understanding of character development. I plan to also have students focus on their writing skills. They will develop their skills in writing clear claims and providing textual evidence to support those claims. These goals address several of my students' struggles described above. As I stated, some of my students struggle with clearly explaining their ideas through writing. My goal is to teach them how to write a claim, provide evidence to support their claim, and explain how the quote supports the claim. As the class progresses in their writing, I would like students to also develop their spelling though this is not a focus for my inquiry. The overall long-term goal is for students to demonstrate their close reading and inference skills in their writing. If students can demonstrate their knowledge through clear and cohesive sentences by the end of the year, I would call the year a success. 

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V. Opportunities and Challenges
      There are several opportunities to help me achieve the goals I have for my class. We are currently working with our first novel Series of Unfortunate Events: The Bad Beginning and students are beginning their character analysis of the characters. I will be using much of the curriculum and supplementary support activities from other students in the district. We will continue reading other novels throughout the year including Hoot later this year. While the curriculum provides opportunities to achieve my goals through instruction, I think my student behavior could cause some challenges. Despite creating expectations of classroom behavior when we do physical activities in class, my students have difficulties with understanding and following expectations. The few activities that we have done have led to disruptions and inappropriate behaviors. Much of this undesired behavior stems from the students not having much structure in their previous classes as well as the lack of socialization they experienced with online learning during their formative years. Another challenge that I could face is our AB Block schedule. I do not see my students as frequently as I would like to fill the gaps in their education as well as address the grade level standards that I am focusing on. Overall, we have established good foundations in our relationships and my students really enjoy the content that we have been covering so far. I have already seen growth with some of my students' writing and close reading and am looking forward to seeing their progress throughout the year.