ASSIGNMENT SIX: DVD Reflection- Included in your text is a DVD containing video clips of Regie’s conferences with writers in the classroom. There is a detailed commentary accompanying the DVD on page 336 of her text. Please watch the DVD and then look at her teaching notes beginning on page 336 (Regie suggests just watching without notes first so that you don’t miss what she and the students are doing.) After both watching and reading her notes, write your reflection and please post a copy of your DVD Reflection to the blog.
*NOTE: If you experience problems playing the DVD please refer to the Writing Essentials companion website at www.heinemann.com/writingessentials for directions for playing the DVD. Look in the upper right hand corner for the link.
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Assignment 6, DVD reflection
ReplyDeleteIrene Osterman Sussman
The first thing I noticed about the video was how great it is for me to have Regie as a model for writing conferences. I learned more from watching her than reading all of the notes.
I noticed that while the 4th grade students read their poems, Regie read the 2nd grade students work. I always have students read their work unless they ask me to. However, I can see the advantage in the interest of time, or when a student has barely gotten started and the teacher is modeling how to get the story on the page.
I love the way she talks to the students. I love the way she starts out having peers clap for a title or a beginning (2nd grade) or the completed piece, to make sure the conference begins with a celebration. To me, her conferences are really a public conversation. She’s inviting the writers to talk and add and tell their stories, she’s also inviting the whole class to participate by noticing with her, “I love the way she says. . .” “Don’t you love how she . . . “ These comments build the self-esteem and confidence of the writers while encouraging the class to be in on her compliments. What wonderful modeling!!
The second grade conferences were great for me to watch. I noticed that in several the conversation involved the writer telling his or her story because it wasn’t yet on paper. While Regie prompted and took notes, helping the writer, my assumption is the rest of the class was learning how to tell their own complete stories as well. It’s fairly common for first graders to either ramble (if they’re writing) or to leave a story hanging out there. I’m excited to work more with shared conferences using incomplete work to be more effective at modeling for my students how to tell a story from beginning to end.
Regie was quite honest with the students about the importance of not being confusing or boring to their readers. Terrific! What she’s doing is putting the responsibility of writing with meaning and with the audience in mind, on her students’ shoulders. I was never quite that frank with my class but I have always been a believer in the saying, “children will live up to your expectations.” Again, I found it so helpful to watch her say, “It’s easier for the reader if you say. . . “, “What would help the reader is if you would say. . . ““We don’t want to confuse or bore our reader.” I also found her explicit modeling of crossing out repetitive text insightful. Not only does she explain a writer’s responsibility to their reader, but she gives her students, with practice, a way to fix it without the tedium of rewriting an entire piece.
The final section of the DVD, the editing piece, is the only lesson I wasn’t inspired by. I felt it was too long and not engaging. Also, Regie says the student is low performing; that tells me that perhaps most of the class has already mastered those sight words and may be disinterested in the conversation. I have done whole class shared editing of my writing. While I agree with Regie that students often learn best from each other, in this case I prefer to use my own writing so I can really target what the whole class needs and avoid having a students’ editing needs be the focal point.
I really liked her focus on the audience, too! I liked that she explained what might run through their heads!
DeleteI agree with you on your assessment of the final piece of the DVD. I like to have student writing up there to edit, but I like to let the kiddo know before that I will have it up there - and that we might find some places they can improve. Usually, with a bit of practice, and a lot of praise, they LOVE taking their writing up there - even my strugglers! I think the key is to praise, praise, praise. I usually do a 2:1 ration of comments to suggestions. They beam after a whole class share that they get compliments from :)
Thanks for the 2:1 ratio tip :)
DeleteSo glad you enjoyed the DVD. We are also inspired by watching Regie.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed watching Regie confer with the students and jotted notes as I watched. I liked that she said at the beginning of the first conference that the main reason we share is to celebrate. I think that changes the tone to a more positive one. I liked that she had the student read the poem twice in the second video - that was really powerful to see how much more fluent he became - and how adorable was it to watch him laugh so hard he cried??!! I REALLY like the editing the kids are doing in video 4 (and throughout). I liked all of the praise she offered the strugglers and I'm betting they enjoyed sharing/writing so much more after hearing the praise!
ReplyDeleteIn video seven (the 1:1), I thought her conference sounded a lot like mine...but I get hung up because I feel like they go on too long. I can only get to 3-4 kids per day, which means I can only get to 15-20 out of my 30 kids per week. How do I balance that? Also, I liked the hum of the room, but there were a lot of adults watching the other kids (she had her back to the room), and she was really focused on this ONE student - which I'm very jealous of :) I am wondering what my kids would do if I focused this much...I'm going to try it!
Finally, Video 8 was not my favorite. I read through her comments, and she acknowledged that it was long, but I thought there were some ways she could engage the whole class. I thought she could have copied his writing (with his permission), and had the kids to the activity with him - so they were circling words, making editing marks, and writing the words on the back of the paper...they they could make a "class agreement" that they would spell those words correctly. I also thought that if she was focusing on spelling, she could have kids stop and with a partner find one word THEY had spelled incorrectly, then circle and fix that one. They could then share the word they misspelled and maybe that could lead to some future spelling lessons?
The last thing I have rolling around in my head after this video is how to relate the conference back to the learning target for the day. We have a heavy focus on a reflection that is related to our mini-lesson, so I typically choose kids to share that hit that target (sometimes I help kiddos who I'd like to be able to share), and usually I ask them prior if they want to share.
Overall, it is so nice to see others conferring! It seems like such a secretive thing (kind of like teacher grade books ;) But one that needs to be shared!
Amanda, I agree it's challenging to find different students to share who have written something that relates to the learning target for the day. Last year I found it was the same 8 kiddos who experimented with the lesson. I usually ended up sharing one of their writing along with celebrating a student or two who made progress in any area.
DeleteWhile it's most powerful to use student's work from the class, if you need to relate to the learning objective could you have a file of examples you could put up on the screen from other students or previous years?
DeleteAnd after I commented, I realized that I could have a word wall with words we agree (as a class) not to misspell - that way if they do, I could tell them to check out the wall!
ReplyDeleteI found it really helpful to watch these conferences and to see the different types of conferences that she has. I really like the idea of celebrating student writing, even more so now that I have seen it in action. This is something that I’m going to be adding to my class this year because it is obvious how proud the kids were after they read their writing to their peers and it’s one more way to expose all students to more writing. It was helpful to see that in these first celebrations Regie didn’t really give much feedback to the students, it was just about letting them share what they were writing and knowing that it’s okay to do that as compared to the conferences she did with the second graders where she was really trying to give them support in their writing to change or continue their stories. One of the conferences I found most helpful was the one one one conference with AlexSandra because this is what I expect I will have to do with most of my students. My students have a lot of difficulty with language and written language and I know that I will need to provide a lot of scaffolded support in the beginning similar to this conference. It was helpful to hear what Regie was saying and I like the idea of using post it notes throughout so that students are still expected to write the words in their story, but they can have some support and it helps to keep up the pace of the conference. The minilesson was also really informative to watch. While she talks about spelling in the book, it still seems unclear to me how I should teach it. I like how she expected students to be able to spell common words and then never told students how to spell the words, but instead encouraged them by having them think of other words that have the same sounds. She kept telling the teachers in that video that they need to work on spelling and students should know those sounds. It makes me think that in addition to having a word wall with common words it would also be helpful to have a sound wall with common sounds and words that contain those sounds so that students can use that when spelling also.
ReplyDeleteHi Amanda,
ReplyDeleteYes, many teachers have commented about this conference. We agree, it was a little hard to watch. We wonder what Regie would say if we could ask her about it.