Lucas Savela - Lesson Response

·      What students learned and which students struggled with the lesson. 

For my lesson, I read the Chris Van Allsburg picturebook Two Bad Ants, without showing them the illustrations. During the reading, I asked the students to either write or draw about what they were seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, and feeling throughout the book to promote visualization. After reading the book the second time while showing the illustrations, I gave them some writing prompts to practice writing in detail. To launch this, I shared a piece I wrote from the perspective of a child walking for the first time.

 For the most part, I think the visualization worksheet was a good activity that students could take away from. When I stopped a couple of times throughout the story, there was a lot of participation with students sharing their answers. 

The writing prompt, however, was a different story. Some of my stronger writers grasped the idea of writing to help their audience visualize what was going on in the story without explicitly telling it to the audience. From a number of possible prompts, a lot students chose to write about "a cat chasing a mouse." The stronger students could write from the perspective of the mouse or the cat, and explain from their perspective (a mouse hole being a cave, humans being "giants", etc.)

Some students, who are usually strong students, got carried away in writing descriptive narratives of the prompt they chose. While they had well developed conventions of writing, and were detailed in their sentences, they missed the point to create a piece that would help their readers visualize the story going on. It was a little difficult to help them see where to add visualization because they would show me their work, which they thought was "completed" and have them go back to try to change a bulk of their piece.

It was good to see that the students enjoyed the first visualization activity and that they could identify how they themselves visualized the story. Maybe with more time, the students who struggled would be able to grasp the idea of writing in order to promote visualization.

·      What are alternate reads of your students’ performance or products?

An alternative read to the performance could be that they did not understand what the purpose of the writing activity. They may have gotten excited that they had a choice in the prompt that they could write about that they overlooked the fact that it was suppose to be an emulation of Chris Van Allsburg's style in Two Bad Ants. What the students wrote were similar to other assignments they have done before.

·      What did you learn about your students’ literacy practices that extend beyond your objectives?

I learned that some students are very good at making predictions or inferences. I was surprised at how many people were able to correctly identify where the ants were throughout the story. I even did a quick survey of students who had read the book before, and the students answering did not have any previous exposure to the book. I was really impressed by some of the students ability to infer.

·      When and how will you re-teach the material to students who need additional support?

Throughout the rough draft writing process for their stories based on The Mysteries of Harris Burdick, I will read their stories and giving them suggestions as to where they could implement some examples of visualization. I will also continue to model writing of my own.

·      If you were to teach this same lesson again, what would you do differently and how do you think the changes would improve students’ learning?

One thing I was considering doing, and would have done if I had more time for a lesson, would write an alternative story to Two Bad Ants, using no descriptive language at all. After they listened to the story twice, with all of the details and descriptive language, I would have liked to give them a really dry, interpretation of the story. Instead of the ants dropped into a "boiling brown lake," my version would say "the ants fell in coffee." I would try to emphasize how using descriptive language helps us feel from the ants' perspective as opposed to being just told what happened. 

What did you learn so far about implementing your ‘core practice’ and what do you need to do to continue your professional learning? 
From the first worksheet activity, I was surprised at how involved the whole class was, even the students who tend not to pay attention and are easily distracted. They could identify what they saw, felt, etc. In other words, they can recognize visualization when it's there.

I would like to learn how to take visualization to the next level and how students could produce their own works utilizing visualization. At first, I thought the task may be too tough for 5th graders, but there were a handful of students who could produce well-developed narratives. I would like to find a catalyst to help the rest of my students to be able to head in that direction.