Writing for Education 705: Blog—Chapter III

Due to technical difficulties, I do not have video of me teaching; the video shows students in their collaboration groups discussing their annotated poems. Thus, I am critiquing my teaching from memory. Prior to the students gathering in groups to discuss their poems, they first annotated their poems. I conducted a mini-lesson, where I, with student help, annotated a poem that I projected on the whiteboard. In this mini-lesson (see poem annotation artifact), we used guiding questions about the poem’s structure and language to deepen our understanding of the poem. For this mini-lesson students were grouped as a whole-class. They were first given copies of the poem and the guiding questions; they read the poem on their own, and then we read it again as a class. I explained to the class purpose of poem annotation.

Good Points

Overall, this mini-lesson went well. Students seemed to understand its purpose and saw it as a useful step to understanding their poems and the paper writing process. Also, I think projecting the poem onto the whiteboard where it could be marked up worked well. Additionally, using the questions as a guide, I asked for student volunteers to come up to the whiteboard and circle and draw arrows or write comments about specific parts of the poem.

Points to Improve

One thing that I would like to improve is to set this lesson up with more clarity. Possibly, I could do this by alerting students the day before what the plan is and why—I think this kind of preview would give students some time to ponder questions before the actual lesson. If I do this lesson over again, I would change the timing; it felt rushed, I would preview the lesson, and I would have students pair-share their thoughts about the poem before I ask them to respond to the guide questions.

Analysis of Questions/Discussion:

I always feel blessed that I teach literature; it inherently offers a hook. I always try to make it a practice to scan the room with my questions so that I am not focusing on the extroverts. For this mini-lesson the guiding questions directed most of the discussion. The questions are familiar for students because we have asked them with regard to poetry throughout our unit. Who is the speaker? What is the subject of the poem? What words/images stand out? I remind students of what metaphor (figurative language) does by asking: “What two things is the poet comparing in this metaphor or simile? What layers of meaning does it suggest? What is the tone? And I remind students what is meant by tone and prompt them with possible suggestions. I always encourage to delve into their responses and connect the sense they express with the text. A common question, much to student dismay, is “What line, what phrase, what image” makes you think that?

The Video

Again, my guiding question for this project: Does collaboration improve student engagement and student writing? From viewing the video, it is clear that the students are engaged with understanding their poems.

As I walked around the room, students were asking questions of each other, pointing out lines or words they liked or didn’t get. Students told me they had chosen poems because they were sad, tragic, or deep. They were actively sharing—helping each other to make sense of their poems.