Notes
Allyson and I met on Thursday, February 19, for her third coaching meeting. We are finishing up the Examining Influence phase of the Vector model and beginning the Committing to Change phase.
Allyson is concerned that her students are having difficulty answering 2 part questions in which they have to answer a question about the text in the first part of the question, and then cite evidence from the text to support their answer. At our last meeting we decided that she would survey her students to determine what their issues were with answering the questions. She administered the survey and found that most of the students said they didn’t understand the wording of the question.
As she described their reaction, we came to the conclusion that students are not understanding the academic vocabulary of the question. They are having issues with words like perspective, support, conclude, cite evidence, etc.
Having this information led us to the idea that students need explicit instruction of the academic vocabulary found in the Wisdom and Wit passages. A goal has been developed that “By the end of the semester, 90% of the students will score at least 80% or higher on the Wit and Wisdom question sets.”
Not only will Allyson explicitly teach the words, but she will use the words throughout the day in her instruction in other content areas.
Allyson also discussed that she had perused the resource that I had sent her and had found a list
of things that “good readers do” as they read. She share this list with her students and told them that they should be doing these anytime they read, not just when the teacher asks them to. She said she has seen the children using the strategies found on the list after they had the discussion. They are beginning to “think about their thinking” as they are reading.
At our next meeting, Allyson will share the words she will be teaching explicitly and we will determine a time when I will be able to Zoom into her classroom to watch her as explicitly teaches the vocabulary words.