This week we continued working on developing our skills analyzing poetry, identifying theme, figurative language, while we added in learning how to look at structure and attitude/tone of the author. This week we worked with Langston Hughes poem “Mother to Son” for both our TPFAST and CeESS paragraphs. As we have done in the past, Baldwin introduced the poem to students using a video of the poem being read. I notice that when she has something come up, like administrative issues that need her attention, she makes sure to have students work on other classwork that they have not completed. There are more than a handful of students who are behind on their work. She also uses some of her class time teaching students’ certain skills on the computer. All the skills that she teaches have some application to the assignment but are also very relevant to things they will need to know in life.
I worked with students one-on-one a lot this week. I watched as they worked through the annotations and understanding how to identify figurative language and interpret its different meanings. We practiced our CeESS paragraphs twice this week, once analyzing theme in “Mike’s New Car” short and the second writing a paragraph about the poem “Mother to Son”. Melissa scaffolds her assignments really well; we focus mainly on one text and topic (like metaphor and structure) then write a paragraph using the techniques that we discussed during the week. One thing I have noticed over the last few weeks our class has worked with CeESS paragraphs that many students are not comfortable with their writing. They seem to understand what the poem is about and how to describe the metaphors when they talk through them, but they cannot write it out. Even when I tell them that what they said is exactly what they should write they are uncertain.
Melissa thinks this is because many of the students are “golden retrievers”. She had them take a personality test on the first day of school and the golden retriever is someone who wants to please and do things correctly or how the teacher wants them to do it. I can see how this could be the case, but as we get the data back from the iReady diagnostic test I fear that there is a large number of students are not at the grade level the need to be for their writing. There were particularly two students that I worked with this week that did not seem to comprehend how to structure a sentence. There were also a lot of basic punctuation and capitalization mistakes. Students easily corrected them when I pointed out the mistake, but I wonder if these mistakes were made because they didn’t care or because they don’t remember/are out of practice.
It was amazing to work with the students one-on-one. Watching them comprehend how to write the paragraphs and when their ideas were correct. I try to build their confidence by showing them that they have the correct ideas in their head, it’s just hard to find the words. We did do a writing assessment the second week of school, but I wonder if a weekly free write journal would assist in developing their comfort with writing. It feels like they do not trust their own voice. It was also really nice to hear some of the students say that the one-on-one help really helped them understand the CeESS paragraphs. I am developing more a rapport with the students in both classes, and they are starting to open up as a class and chat amongst themselves.
I am also realizing the speed at which the four-by-four block schedule moves. You really do feel like you are cramming a whole year into 4-5 months. I wish I had more time to work with all of these students to fully develop their skills and feel comfortable with the standards that we target. This is just something to keep in mind as I look for jobs in the future.
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