Narrative and Reflection

Topic

The community for the school is very mixed. Many of the students come from lower

income areas and from backgrounds that are all very diverse and different from one another.

The ethnicities of the classes were wide-ranging throughout the school, although in the class I

was working with in particular, more that three quarters of the class was white, with the other

quarter being a mix of African American and other minorities. In the class that I was working

with, most of the students were achieving well in English; they all were in the Global Studies

class, which is a pre-requisite to the International Baccalaureate program. Tis program requires

a high level of rigor and was a screened program that checked for grades and test scores for

them to be admitted. While the students are not in IB classes during the ninth grade, they were

taking GS classes to prepare before starting to program course load in the eleventh grade.

When designing my lessons for this project, I made sure to take into consideration that

most of these students have a good level of background knowledge on some on these concepts.

They also like to work quickly and more independently while in class from what I had seen in

previous classes, so I wanted to be sure that I could give them the opportunity to do this. The

students also had prior knowledge of the subject matter we would be working with through

previous class activities, so I took this into account when designing the lessons for this section

of the unit.

Objectives and Curriculum Goals

 Students will be able to brainstorm and organize ideas in order to begin the

writing process for their written assignment on The Good Earth.

 Students will be able to practice organizing their ideas and drafting them in

an outline format in order to begin the writing process for their written

assignment on The Good Earth.

o CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.9-10.2: Write informative/explanatory texts to

examine and convey complex ideas, concepts, and information

clearly and accurately through the effective selection, organization,

and analysis of content.

o CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.9-10.2.a: Introduce a topic; organize complex

ideas, concepts, and information to make important connections and

distinctions…

o CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.9-10.2.b: Develop the topic with well-chosen,

relevant, and sufficient facts, extended definitions, concrete details,

quotations, or other information and examples appropriate to the

audience's knowledge of the topic.

 Students will review types of sentences and clauses and practice using

semi-colons in order to be able to implement them in their own writing.

 o CCSS.ELA-Literacy.L.9-10.1: Demonstrate command of the

conventions of standard English grammar and usage when writing or

speaking.

o CCSS.ELA-Literacy.L.9-10.1.b: Use various types of phrases and

clauses (independent, dependent) to convey specific meanings and

add variety and interest to writing or presentations.

o CCSS.ELA-Literacy.L.9-10.2.a: Use a semicolon to link two or more

closely related independent clauses.

For the series of lessons that I worked through with the students, they worked on the

various conventions of writing, from the outlining and drafting process to the grammar

conventions that they struggled with in previous writing activities. They will focus on the

outlining and drafting process in the first two lessons, then for the third lesson they will work

on editing and revisions after reviewing various grammar concepts.

Assessment Plan

For the pre and post assessments, the students will complete Google forms, both on the

computer and in writing. The tests will be the same format and questions in order to judge

growth. They will be mixing multiple choice, true/false, and short answer/fill-in-the-blank

questions. The students will have about 10 minutes to complete both of these exams. The first

one will be graded for the correct answers, but will only count for completion credit for the

actual grade, then the post test will count for graded credit.
 The tests will work through all of the subjects that are covered in the objectives and

standards stated in the beginning. The first five questions will have the students define in short

answers what various terms mean. They will be defining independent and dependent clauses,

semi-colon uses, and simple and complex sentences. During the pre-test, they will be able to

use an example if they do not know the definition in order to demonstrate their understanding

of the concept. For questions six through eight, they will have to tell if the semi-colon in the

sentence is used correctly. Then the rest of the questions will focus on the writing process and

outlining, such as what the first three steps of the writing process are, what are the main

sections of a research paper, and what a thesis statement is supposed to convey to the reader.

During the lessons, the students will have a chance to listen to lecture about what the

concepts are while taking notes, as well as getting to practice the concepts through their essay

writing and through warm-ups and closures. The closure will help to see how the students

grasped the concepts, then when they turn in their essay rough drafts and edits, I will be able to

see their application of these concepts. On the pre-assessment, many of the students did not

perform well, with 10 of the 15 students in my group scoring 50% or lower and the remaining 5

students scoring between a 51% to 62%. By the post-assessment, every student had a positive

increase in their scores, with everyone scoring higher than a 60%. Most of the students had a

small level of background knowledge about all of the subjects, but struggled with defining and

applying them in the tests. Discussions in class and informal assessment questions throughout

the lesson helped to gauge what how they were progressing.

Instruction
 The first lesson will focus on the outlining process and the assignment itself. They will

start by reviewing the assignment, asking questions when necessary. The students will then get

the chance to take notes on a lecture about the outlining process. Throughout the lecture, they

will be asked questions to gauge understanding and to briefly apply the concepts. After going

over the concepts and the assignment, students will then get the chance apply these ideas

through their own outlining and research of their essay drafts. The closure will have them judge

their own progress and ask questions, so I will be able to see what they are still struggling on as

well as what the students think they are more confident on.

The second lesson will focus more on the application of these concepts with the

students writing more of their outline and starting their essay draft. To informally assess their

progress and knowledge, the students will be completing work logs with their classmates. They

will have to write their own objectives to set goals for their class time, then look at a

classmate’s work to give them feedback on how well they are doing, what they could do better,

and what they are already doing really well. The closure will have them state what the hardest

and easiest part of the paper writing process so far has been as well as complete the reflection

on the work log where they will evaluate their own progress and how well they did at

completing their objective goal. This will be collected so I can see how well they are doing.

The final lesson will be focusing on the grammar element of the writing conventions.

The start of the lesson will be a review of the grammar concepts, where the students will be

able to take notes as well as complete practice questions to work with these concepts. They will

then complete a padlet where they will get to ask any questions they still have about and of the

writing conventions we have discussed so far in any of the lessons and we will answer these as
a group. Then, they will complete peer edits and revisions. The students will work with their

classmates to edit each other’s essays to look for both content as well as grammar errors they

can fix. This will give them a chance to practice using these concepts as well as identifying them

in writing. Finally, they will be able to make some of the revisions to their essays that their

classmates suggest and turn in a new copy of their essays.

The students responded well to each of these lessons. The students who struggled more

with the concepts from the beginning were able to ask questions where needed, as well as have

a physical copy to references as a guide with all of the concepts on it while they were writing to

be able to strengthen their skills. The students were able to use their background knowledge

during the first lesson to discuss what the elements of outlining and drafting were and then did

well applying that in the writing process during the second lesson. By the third lesson, all of the

students had a good sense of outlining and drafting and had completed their rough draft. They

did well with the editing and were able to pick out errors their classmates had made in some

one the grammar areas that we discussed in class.

Analysis, Reflection, and Self Evaluation

Through the informal and formal assessments, the students in the group I was looking at

were all able to demonstrate that they understood the concepts better than when they started.

From looking at things like their work logs and their rough drafts with edits, I was able to see

how the students were not only understanding the concepts, but also applying them in their

writing as well. They had their rough drafts set up in the way that we talked about setting up

the outline in class, so that showed that they were using the skills we discussed, and they were
able to implement some of the different types od sentences as well as properly use a semicolon

in their writing as well. All of the students showed a positive increase in their test scores, with

the average increase being 37%. Every student scored above a 60% in the post-test, whereas

before in the pre-test, they were all below this percentage.

Student #2 was the one who did not show as much increase in their test scores overall

compared to the rest of the class. The area that this student still seemed to struggle with was in

identifying if the grammar conventions were used correctly. After looking at the edits that they

made to their essay and to their partner’s essay, I was able to see that they were identifying

and using the concepts correctly in some case, but still weren’t completely certain on them.

After speaking with the student individually during the editing process, I was able to clarify

some of their issues and then was able to work with them during a lesson after the third lesson

in the set when the students were completing their final copies and was able to see them using

the concept for frequently and correctly, so I was still able to see some improvement in their

skills.

The strategies that proved to be most effective with my students were the guided notes

and practice questions that we did with the grammar concepts. I had the students take notes

with the outlining, but I did not provide them a sheet with a template, whereas with the

grammar concepts, the way they should be taking notes was laid out for them. The student not

only did better at remember the definitions of the terms when it came to the post-test by using

this method, but they also did better with applying them when they had the examples to do

this will on the packet. If I were to change this set of lessons moving forward, I would use the
same kind of note taking strategy for the outline and drafting process as well since it seemed to

really help the students overall.

Moving forward, one of my goals will be to better lay out the concepts for the students

in a way hat is easily accessible and then give them the chance to practice that with modeling.

This was something I did not do as much with these lessons and then the students had more

questions about the concepts afterwards, so by modeling more moving forward, I would be

able to demonstrate what I am instructing more as well ad giving them as chance to work with

the concepts with me at the same time. Another goal would be to use for more student friendly

not taking guides and worksheets for lessons. The students responded very well when they had

a format to take notes in rather than being told to do it entirely on their own, so by giving them

this opportunity more often and then instructing them on how the notes sheet works so they

can use these skills and strategies in their note taking in the future, I will be able to build better

note taking skills in my students as well as foster a better understanding of the concepts I am

trying to teach them.