Inquiry Plan 3rd Post! :)

Shewweee!! I'm done..... Needless to say once you see my video you will really get to see a very "limited" portion of my inquiry plan. Due to time constraints, I was really creative in ensuring that you got to see the "meat and potatoes" of my plan. In my video, you are able to see the first group of students that I worked with. Those student's, a majority of them, are on alternative assessment. These students have very limited recall and have difficulty comprehending the text read in class. When instructing to this group, I am more interested in the basics of the text. Do they know the main characters? Can they recall basic information from the text? You will be able to tell that I used error correction when guiding student's to the answers to questions. I did my best to ensure that the student's had an opportunity to be correct. Although the audio is very poor, I asked one student after we had discussed that the main character needed a hammer to fix the roof why the main character needed a hammer. Her reply, "to put a picture on the wall?"..As you can see there is a lot of repetition and basic recall.

When looking at group 2, you can see that we move at a much faster pace. We did very little recalling information from previous day's reading. Students answered guided notes with the help of the document camera for spelling correction. In the second part of this same video you can see that the student's are engaged in a reading group. I wanted to show the video how we normally conducted class before the implementation of this inquiry plan. We used small group instruction to read and student's answered questions. In the reading group, students volunteered to be the lead reader for the day. All students are not very strong readers but there has been a very positive environment created with these group of students and they are very comfortable around each other. You can see in the video when the student was not able to properly pronounce a word in the text that someone else would help them. However, there was only limited time to fit everything into the video.

This plan really turned out how I had hoped it would. This particular group was great to try something like this with. They are a very diverse group of student's and the plan really went well in the classroom. All students were very nervous to be videotaped and you can see when you watch the video that a couple of students are aspiring starts. They keep making eye contact with the camera (haha). This plan will continue to be used in my room, and I hope that through continued modification it can only enhance instruction in the room and hopefully incorporate those lower learners into the reading groups.

Inquiry Plan #2

Things are trucking along! I gave the kids their first test over the first 2 chapters on friday. They all did fairly well. There were a few who did not do well, and I feel that this was due to their lack of focus while I was reading and their lack of cooperation. Other than that, I'm really excited. We started off the week with a new chapter. I have started splitting the class into two groups. The first group goes to the computer lab for fast for word, while the second group stays down to read the novel. This is working out much better than I thought it would. I am able to break the book apart more with the individual groups. The higher ability group has more DOK 3 questions asked orally, I still read to them because they are not very strong readers, but they are filling out graphic organizers for each chapter, and they all do their guided notes individually. With the lower ability group, I spend more time reading the chapter. We focus more on characterization and vocabulary. With the second group, I stop after each question on their guided notes WS and help them answer the questions. The questions are projected on the document camera so they have the opportunity to see how to spell the word. This take a lot of time, and I'm considering giving less questions on the guided notes sheet. I'm not sure though. I still want to make sure they are following along and I feel that if I go ahead and give them the "notes" they will not be as attentive as I would like for them to be. The first group is getting ahead of the second group, but I'm ok because I feel that we are progressing and the students have more time to really focus on the material read and fill out their graphic organizers. This is really progressing and I'm really excited to see that students are learning about the characters in the novel because this is not an easy book for them to relate to.

Any suggestions for the notes situation... please let me know!

Inquiry Plan #1

This week has been a goofy week, we had Rebel Pride this week which is a team building activity day so I didn't get to see my students on wednesday. On monday and tuesday we really started to dive into the book "Where the Lilies Bloom". The kids are really enjoying listening to me read but we have not made a lot of progress with comprehension. We read 1 chapter on monday, but when I went back to assess the questions I had asked orally on monday they could not remember them on tuesday. FRUSTRATING!!!! I decided to switch things up and only do a half a chapter, and drill more on the questions. There are some really important things going on in the book right now. I had to spend my planning picking the chapter apart, looking for the questions that I felt my "higher level" students needed to be asked. I had a more challenging time coming up with these questions. However, I'm playing it by ear to see whether this modification helped at all.

Wish me luck!

Inquiry Plan

I am ready to really kick this project into gear. Hopefully everybody had a spooky Halloween. Hopefully the kids aren't wired this week from all of the candy they ate this weekend :(

I will keep you updated on the inquiry plan progress.