Plan B

Serve up your own slice or find a second helping
at  Two Writing Teachers. 

We had visitors on campus today from Learning Sciences International (LSI) . LSI trains administrators to evaluate teachers using Marzano's framework.  I volunteered to be one stop on the training rotation knowing it was a learning stop for administrators, not an evaluation of my teaching to be counted against me.

Just to orient you, here is my Common Board Configuration (CBC). Today's learning goals were to read and comprehend literature and summarize text. One of my administrators questions that first goal because I use it all of the time. I understand the questioning of it, but we work toward that goal everyday when we read--reading and comprehending literature--moving students up the ladder in terms of text complexity--that is always what I'm working toward in my room with readers. The CBC represents what some might call an agenda. They are required by our school and district.

Sometimes teaching is problem solving. Though I have a plan in place, the lesson didn't go as I planned. There were a few problems to solve today: missing books, matching editions, losing wifi, and reading plans to name a few. We are using  Cyrano de Bergerac to review summarizing and learn how to apply critical theories to textual analysis (why we balance whole-class texts with independent choices is another post). We're in the early stages of analysis and today was all about summarizing. Students need to be able to summarize and demonstrate their comprehension before they can dig deeper and analyze.

When I noticed students struggling to summarize scenes in small groups (each small group had one scene to summarize using Somebody-Wanted- But-So and then share out). I decided to poll the class, so that I could change direction if needed.

Guess how many students are reading the whole-class work?

The majority of my afternoon class was behind in their reading of the play. It's difficult to summarize something you have not read. The risk-free, anonymous poll told me--as did my observation of their initial work--that they students needed more support for today's lesson.

{I know, this is what sometimes happens when 

I don't give a good budget tour, as Gallagher 

would say, at the start of a longer work. I accept responsibility; 

now I have to work around and fix it.}

Time for plan B.

We quickly summarized Act I, scenes we've talked about before, and instead of continuing to jigsaw scenes in Act II, we adjourned to our circle where we read several scenes from Act II together. With just ten minutes of reading together we were able to read four scenes. That gave us plenty to use to practice the GIST summarizing strategy.

Problem solved. Sometimes teaching means shifting gears to meet students at their point of need.  The visitors didn't stay through our ten-minute reading of Act II.  I wonder what they made of my assessment and adjustments today. 

Gallagher, Kelly. 2009. Readicide: How Schools Are Killing Reading and What You Can Do About It.