Thursday, May 19, 2016

Assignment Six: DVD Reflection

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.

2 comments:

  1. The celebration conferences were really fun to watch. Although I certainly imagined how affirming the experience would be for students I really could see it on the student’s faces after they shared. I could see how powerful it was for them certainly, but also as teaching moments for other students it clearly held a lot of power, to see their peers’ work and particular poetic devices that they choose to use be celebrated. It would be very motivating for the rest of the students to try new things. I also really liked the tone that Reggie set. She was calm and a little bit slow paced, which really gave time for students to soak in the moments. I noticed she read or had the student read their poems three times over.
    I appreciated watching how Reggie handled the two Whole Class Share Teaching Conferences, especially Dereks. His explanation, with his difficulty sequencing, was a little difficult to sort through. I liked the way Reggie asked questions and gave guidance to help the story get out in sequence. I think I would have felt a little timid to give such direct instruction about what Derek could say - “you could just say, I went up stairs and nobody noticed,” but Derek clearly needed that level of support so it was helpful to see how Reggie gave it.
    Likewise it was helpful to watch how Reggie supported and directed Alex in the one on one conference. I think I so much want my student’s writing to be original, spontaneous, and from the heart that I am very reluctant to, as I see it, tell them what to do. But obviously these two students, and several of mine need that support and probably can’t progress well without it. So I just need to see that kind of interaction as scaffolding which is needed to support the writer for the time but which will be removed later. Essentially I guess I just need to be more comfortable with the guided practice level of the Optimal Learning Model.
    The final video of the spelling mini lesson was helpful to watch. I wondered, since Derek just fixed his spelling mistakes, what did he do after this mini lesson while the other students were fixing their spelling mistakes? Maybe he still had more to fix? Maybe he still had to fix them on his actual paper as he had been writing on a transparency.

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  2. Glad you enjoyed watching Regie in action. :)

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