My thoughts from the Observation 23rd May 2017

Focus of this observation changed on the morning before the observation and after I had completed the pre observation sheet.

I was aiming for interaction between the boys with articulating to each other what they were learning and using feedback and feed forward to discuss their writing. However I found that the boys did not have clarity around what they were learning to do or why, even though they had both been able to complete the writing.  Jae Hee and Jeremy did not cognitively recognise the achievement of the learning intention and remember to's even though it was apparent in their writing.

So the observation became teacher led rather than student led. My goal from the Term 1 observation was to move into writers circles and peer to peer feedback and feed forward using the sentence prompts we had developed as a class, but I realised when talking with the boys in the morning before the observation that this was not going to be a happening thing! My students who are on track and likely to succeed are able to work in this model, however clarity of the learning is the greatest need for the students who are needing support.

Listening to the Transcript

• Wait time was between 8 and 10 seconds. It needed to be longer to give the boys more opportunity to formulate the thoughts and articulate them. 
• I did lots of prompting and rephrasing - and sometimes the rephrasing was too much - it interrupted the wait time as I jumped in too soon and gave them more to think about even though it was the same question, just phrased differently.

Sequence was good. 

• What have you been doing in your writing? Setting the scene and putting into context.
• Referred them to look back to their writing books to see what they had been learning to do.  I could have had the boys look back to their books first before asking the questions so they had the chance to reacquaint with the writing. 
• Why are we doing this? 15 seconds silence, rephrased and prompted to think of their Imaginary Land.
• JaeHee did the majority of the talking. Jeremy was able to contribute when prompted to. 
• They both eventually identified the learning - looking at the difference between past and present tense and humour in the writing - informal language rather than formal language. 
• Asked them to read out the remember to that they found difficult - they both read it out and identified the past / present tense

Script:

T: What does past tense mean?

Jeremy: Past tense is after.

Jaehee: It is something that happened in the past.

T: Can you give me some examples? .

Jeremy: I washed my face. (wash - washed - already happened

Jaehee: I played in the hall. (play - played - already happened)

T: Now look to your writing for examples of past tense. Find a sentence to share. 

Both boys found examples to share that were in past tense. We then looked at another sentence in each of their writing that was in present tense and worked together to change it to past tense. 

OVERALL:  The conversation was teacher led - however I am not sure that longer wait time with these two boys would have led to greater input from them. The focus was on their writing and both students came away from the conference with improved clarity of the learning - past and present tense distinction - and both boys improved sentences within their writing.

The first sample below is Jaehee and the other 2 samples are Jeremy's.