Shelby Johnson Writing Unit Critical Reflection

I am student teaching in a third grade classroom at Barkstall Elementary School in Champaign, Illinois. I have a class of twenty-three students, 9 boys,14 girls. The students are mostly Caucasian and African American. There is one student who is Asian and one who is Indian. The students range in skills and I must consider these when making my lesson plans. Some of the boys in the classroom have some major behavior problems. Two of the boys in my classroom are on a check-in/check-out system. They sit apart from other students at their own spot and I must constantly keep an eye on them. The rest of the class sits in groups of three, in rows. There is also one girl with Down Syndrome who also has a twin in our class. She is usually out with another teacher during writing time. Writing time happens at the very end of the day in the last 25 minutes. This is right after an afternoon recess, so they can sometimes be wound up. We just started a poetry unit, so I selected concrete poems for my four lessons. This fit in well as we had already discussed elements of poetry and browsed through many poetry books that we have available in the classroom. It has also been poetry month, which works out! As one of the beginning poetry forms to study, concrete and acrostic poems seemed most appropriate. I handed out their poetry books that they will be adding to until the final weeks of school. Once they have a finalized poem, they may add it to their poetry books.

Overall, creating a writing unit plan was beneficial as a future educator. I had to think about the overall goals and how I could support my students in reaching them. One strategy I really tried to think about was modeling. I know that this was an important part after the mini-lessons. Especially for younger students, modeling is essential in order to them to understand the expectations. I think that the students met most objectives in creating a concrete shape poem. Most students had a clear relation to the shape or drawing of the poem. I could tell what the poem was going to be about after looking at the design or shape. The students were able to create single word concrete poems very well, spending time on emphasizing one specific word. Based on observations and written responses, I think that I need to work with the students on what makes a poem different than any other writing. We have talked about this before, but I will need to reiterate some elements of poetry that they should think about adding to poems they have written. After reading In pictures and in words for my book study, I was able to connect similar big ideas to my poetry unit. When the students were creating their shape poems, many drawings were also included as part of the theme. These and other emphasized words were chosen for a reason. In the book, one big idea in the first section is the fact that illustrators make decisions for their pictures and what goes into them. This is the same for writers. By asking students more about their work during writing conferences, I was able to get more insight onto the student thinking and decision process. I also thought that the cohort group presentation on the poetry genre was helpful when completing this unit. They discussed how you can use mini lessons to introduce the different forms of poetry. I will continue to use the modeling and guided practice with

students on the next forms we do. Also, after discussions about including self work, I have seen the benefits. For instance, when I show students a poem I write, or when I write one with the class, I think the students are more willing to put effort into their own work. They see that I am also taking time to complete the task asked of them. One thing I would do differently during the unit is to not hand out poetry books until the very end. This way, students are not eager to write all their drafts in their books. These would be best if done in their writing journals first, and edited. This way, the best work of the students is what is on display. The students nonverbal and verbal communication has shown me those who are very interested in poetry. I have had multiple students asking me to use the poetry app on the Ipad. I even had one boy, who is usually reluctant to writing, mention how fun a poetry corner activity was during daily five. Overall, I think that this was a successful unit and I am excited to see the students grow in their ability to write poems with more depth and meaning as the semester comes to a close.