Reflection
A Challenge I Faced ​
A challenge I faced during this time was holding students accountable during our time together. During guided writing time students would practice words at the top of their page and then would use the bottom part of the notebook as the perfect part of the page. If students spelled a word incorrectly on the perfect page they would get a piece of white tape. At the start of the study the white tape had a novelty effect. They wanted to use the “cool” new tape and would purposely spell words wrong. It gave me a skewed view of how they were handling the strategies in group and out of group. Before introducing the white tape next school year I plan on talking with my students about how important it is that they only need the tape when they truly didn't know a word. I also saved a journal that has many pieces of tape and one that doesn't have any tape. I'm hoping this will show students how awesome it is to finish their work with no errors, rather than what I saw this school year.
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New Learnings
New learnings I found happened during the research stage of my project. The authors gave not only suggestions for reciprocity for struggling writers, but also for struggling readers. One strategy was to be used for a child who was struggling with a word while reading. They said that if the child wrote the word on the table with their finger it would remind the child how that word is said. This would help bridge the gap between reading and writing as well. I did this frequently with one of my students who struggled with words that started with th-, specifically the word "the." When the student wrote the word they would then be able to say the word and have the confidence to write it. My students left with five new strategies that they could use during writing and spelling time. A strategy that I saw used most frequently was saying the word slowly. By teaching phonemic awareness and saying it slowly sooner than I did this school year, students would have another strategy to use. This would allow students to have a better grasp over the sound of words, and in turn, we could get into more in depth strategies such as analogies and letter boxes.
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A Success I Faced
During this time we had many successes that we celebrated! All of my students grew in their ability to spell. This shows me that their reciprocity between reading and writing words is growing! This also gave me a better view of what strategies I should start off using with students. One strategy that helped students the most was syllable clapping. Next year I plan on introducing this strategy in our first quarter together. At the beginning of second grade my students were wanting to use big words within their writing. By clapping out the syllables and only focusing on one part at a time, they will have more ability and also more confidence to spell and use these larger words correctly! The other strategy that I would start introducing to students during our first few weeks is phonemic awareness in mini lessons. This would be a way to remind students of the sounds of words, blends, and digraphs they may have forgotten over break. By introducing this sooner in the year, we could introduce letter boxes earlier and allow students to have another strategy to solve words and build confidence in themselves.
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How This Study Impacted Me
What I Would Change
When working on reciprocity with my future students I would want to make stronger connections to the high frequency words that we are learning. To start I would focus on the words that are homophones, meaning they sound the same but are spelled and mean something different. I would want to create meaningful learning opportunities to explicitly teach the meanings of these words. This would look like me using them in different sentences, showing and posting pictures for students to reference, and pulling stories that these words are included in. That way when they are spelling, writing, and reading, students will have a better understanding of what has been given to them. Another change I would want to make would be around capital letters. Part of reciprocity is bridging reading and writing together. Students see capital letters at the start of sentences in their books, but by the end of the study this skill was still missing in their writing. To focus on teaching this skill, I would want to include capitalization in mini lessons weekly at the start of the year and in our time during guided writing. By starting this skill sooner rather than later, I would hope students would have a better grasp and understanding of why we do this in our writing. By focusing in on this skill more intensely, conventions scores would improve. With this convention score going up, we could start focusing on the advanced convention indicators and continue to grow so students are ready for third grade.
This study had many impacts on me as an educator, the main one being students can digest a lot of information during a small timeframe. The pre-test on high frequency words worried me, as the spelling errors that were happening didn’t make sense with what they should have been hearing. I was worried if they would be able to apply the strategies if they didn’t know all the sounds of the letters. It was a nice reminder that you meet students where they are at and then grow them as learners from that point. Another impact this study had on me is knowing that I can teach and scaffold all of the strategies through a lesson. Students are capable and if you offer a strategy to help solve a word, they will try. At first I would try the same two or three strategies during our time together. I quickly learned that some students handled analogies better, some needed the letter boxes, and some needed to count syllables. Differentiation is always key in a classroom, but even more so when working with struggling learners.
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Stakeholders
Within my building I frequently collaborated with my instructional coach. Before my study began she helped me find articles for my literature review to strengthen my knowledge on the research being done. She observed me frequently to ensure that strategies were being taught with fidelity and were manageable for students. She also would answer questions I had when it involved specific students and how to aid them in a way that would benefit them.
My teaching partner would answer questions whenever they would arise, specifically questions around what she was doing and what she has seen positive results from. She also helped me with scoring to ensure that no biases were present in this study.
My cadre associate met with me weekly and would check in on progress of the study and how I was feeling. If I felt something wasn’t going well we would problem solve together and find a solution. She would also record my teaching to ensure that all students were being active, but also for me to reflect on how to better my teaching. For the pre-test of reading high frequency words she gave the assessment individually to each student. This allowed me to keep teaching and working on strategies during our small group reading time.
Moving Forward
With group A who is on level for second grade, they will be moving out of guided writing time. They were previously getting a new book one day and then guided writing the next day. Now they will be receiving a new book everyday. This is because their spelling is closer to grade level. They will now work on their high frequency words for 20 minutes each day independently. Even though the students grew and are proficient in the area of spelling high frequency words, my stakeholders and I agreed that they still need daily exposure to these words. Because of this they will be staying in their intervention with the paraprofessional. In class I see that this group of students is thriving. They are using strategies independently and know what strategy will work for the word that they are stuck on. I will then check their words periodically during the week. Group B, who is below level for second grade, will be continuing their guiding writing. This group still needs intensive word study and help building connections between sounds and words. The reason these students are staying in the same intervention is they still are performing below grade level and need more instructional time to make more growth. By continuing the intervention, the hope is this group will end second grade on or close to grade level. By doing this they will be ready for third grade on an academic level, and also will have more confidence.
