This week in Baldwin’s class they did a reading and writing assessment. In all her directions for assignments, Baldwin makes sure to explain why students have to work on this assignment. She highlights specific aspects that will be utilized later in the term. For example, when explaining that students will be using their own experiences to support their claims, she mentions that later in the term they will do something similar except instead of personal experiences they will use the text. This assignment reminds me of what Winn talks about in chapter three of Writing Instruction in the Culturally Relevant Classroom. We do the same assignment in 2nd period. It is interesting to watch how she interacts differently with each class. Her first period is much more talkative than her second. When responding to her questions they do not need to be coaxed or prompted as much as her second. She also seems to explain her directions in more depth than in her first.
On Tuesday she has most of the reading and writing assessment data in and talks me through how she would use this data and answered my questions. We reviewed the students’ scores, Melissa explained how she will use these assessments to change her lessons and focus more on some writing strategies and how to properly support your opinions in an essay. She also reviewed the reading assessment and pointed out a few things. There were a handful of students who scored at much lower grade levels than 11th grade. She did mention that this could in part be her fault for not letting students fully understand the importance of the reading assessment. She talked about how she will have some of the students retake the assessment to see if they score higher and continue to keep an eye on students who scored lower throughout the year.
Wednesday was a short day and back to school night. I observed Baldwin’s 11th ELA, Women Gender Studies, and Mejia’s 10th grade ELA. In Baldwin’s ELA they had a lockdown drill, so they worked on their literary charts for most of the class and as well as the assessment for those who did not complete it the day before. After that they returned their books and checked out A Raisin in the Sun for later in the term. In Mejia’s class they worked on TPFAST, an analysis strategy used in close reads of poetry. In this class students use notebooks provided by Mejia and keep their completed assignments in there. Mejia collects them every couple of weeks to grade. She works with students analyzing mistakes on the board. Baldwin uses a similar activity in her poetry analysis. This is a rather disruptive class where students often call out and use inappropriate language. Mejia tells them to quiet down a few times and they do, but not for long.
The last two days of the week, Baldwin is also working with the TPFAST worksheets for 11th graders. She does not really like how it is only focusing on note taking so we work together to come up with a worksheet that will be students exit ticket for the day. This new assignment utilizes the key points in the TPFAST worksheet but allows students to use their creativity and draw symbols that they can find in the poem and are related to the theme. She walked through the TPFAST worksheets with the students getting them involved in the discussion. This is different than the process Mejia used with her 10th graders. Mejia had students work independently to complete the worksheet and helped them if they had any questions.
On Friday Baldwin had students use the TPFAST steps to analyze a chosen song. She modeled the steps of annotating on their Chromebooks and reviewed the ways they should be analyzing their songs. She then gave them the rest of class to work on their annotations. She and I walked around the classroom answering students’ questions and helping them with their analysis. Despite some students not paying attention during the instruction, many of them did the work during class time.
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