Assignment 7 Final Project Michele Robb Course Number: EDUC-31220 Section ID: 097764 November 20, 2013

In order to effectively reflect on my week of lessons, I must first describe my class. I am an instructional assistant in an RSP class for an elementary school. In previous years, I would help run groups, alternating between groups from week to week with the RSP teacher. This year, we elected for me to focus on one set of students. Our plan was to provide more consistency with the groups, especially with the inclusion of more projects in the regular classroom setting. The class my five day lesson plan focuses on is a 6th grade class. The group is made up of all females, with two English Learners. One EL is more proficient in her verbal skills while the other is more proficient in overall academics but struggles greatly with academic conversation. The general education class spent several weeks reading Where the Red Fern Grows. The teacher and I met regularly to discuss this project (as it was to be given to the whole class). We decided to present this to the group prior to being given to the rest of the class. I believe strongly in extended time if needed, but I feel that motivation and feelings of success are achieved better if students can turn in the finished product at the same time as others. This allowed the group to have both. The lesson plans are written for a five day project only because the assignment for the Foundations class required it. However, I knew the group would not be able to do this project in one week. We stretched this into two weeks. The negative to this was that the class, including my group, had not actually finished reading the novel. This caused some difficulty in attempting to identify headline articles to be written. This is mainly why I did not allow the extra portion of the project to be looked at until the end of the project. One extra a few chose to do was obituaries, based on deaths that happened at the end of the book. The beginning of the project started off slowly, as it contained a combination of understanding newspaper concepts (the 5Ws) as well as working on basic grammar, sentence and

paragraph structure and researching key concepts to then create a headline. The students have a lot of difficulty in this area as they are still very concrete. The purpose of this assignment was to not have them rewrite parts of the book, but to take a piece and then creatively write about it. One student chose a pet section in the newspaper, researching basic facts on hounds and how to care for them. Another wrote a section on whether red ferns exist and the myth surrounding them. What went right? The collaboration piece, including the constant discussion seemed to go very well. The group was constantly helping each other, giving explanations, advice and constructive suggestions that allowed them all to have final products they could be proud of. The planning meeting at the beginning of the session worked well. We discussed what we had already done, reviewing basic skills. Then we discussed (and wrote) what was needed. The group is used to me calling this the to do list so it was an easy concept to write on the white board and check off as we finished a task. Another huge success story was during the creation of the newspaper format lesson (day 4). One student, an English Learner that is highly motivated, was always ready at the beginning of each lesson. She was the first to be ready to type the final draft article and extra into the newspaper format. While the others were peer editing, I was able to individually work with her on understanding how to transfer the information. The next day, two others were ready for this process. I asked the student to be the teacher, allowing me time with another student still struggling to write her final draft. It was a great experience as it helped the EL student practice explaining a process where she was the expert and the others had to rely on her skills to teach them. When it was finished, she came up and said, Wow! Teaching is hard but a lot of fun! Thanks!

There are several items I could have done differently. First, finishing the book prior to this lesson would have given the group more items to write about. Also, one student did not have access to a computer at home and another had little organization so forgot her writings several times. In this case, I would prioritize the one needing to finish all computer work to be on the computer first. For the less organized, since its a small group, I can easily make a copy of what she had before leaving with it. For a large group, some students simply should do the entire project within the classroom and adjustments made. We are all at the mercy of students family life as it affects school work. Instead of getting frustrated, I would eliminate the problem by having this project be a completely in class project. Another strategy was that all of them at some point during the two weeks asked if they could come in during recess or after school to work on it. That showed real motivation and excitement in students that typically did not finish projects in the past. The final day was finishing up loose ends, getting the newspapers pretty. The general education class presented the newspapers in pairs. My group came in prior to the presentations to practice. We discussed strategies on how to survive a presentation. Each practiced orally while others gave feedback. Although I could not go into the larger group to watch the final presentation, it was reported that they were all very excited to present at the same time as everyone else. After this project, the general education teacher and I met to discuss this project for next year. We are going to implement many of the strategies in both classes. I plan on using some of the same strategies as this time, with the inclusion of samples of the student created newspapers from this year as a way for students to visualize what the product should look like.

This was the first time I had attempted to front load a project given in a general education class. The group and I discussed what they liked/disliked about it. All agreed it felt good to turn it in at the same time as everyone else. It is interesting to note that this past week, a new project was announced. The group came in on the first day with all of their information and asked if we could work on it together. All I can say is what a wonderful group of students! I will truly miss them when they graduate from our school at the end of the year!