Kim Stark and I met on March 25 for her 4th coaching meeting.  Kim is in the Take Action phase of the Vector model.  For her goal, Kim is focusing on improving her student’s ability to identify various text structures such as cause and effect relationships, problem and solution, comparing and contrasting. While she is focusing on one particular ELL student in a small group setting, she is also creating activities for her entire class to improve their ability to identify text structures.

To accomplish the goal, Kim has created an activity that has been extremely engaging for her students.  Students have identified an interest area and have then developed information about the interest area.  As they are writing, they are to use various text structures to enhance their writing.  After they have completed the writing, they are creating their own website and will post their ideas to the site.  Kim shared with me the work of the student for whom she is focusing her goal.  Together we analyzed the student’s understanding of the identified text structures and discovered that the student could use more strategies to develop ideas surrounding the structure of problem/solution. Kim will spend time in small group working on this with the student.

Kim felt as though this plan of action has been beneficial for the students as an entire class as well as her focus student.  Children are engaged and are enjoying writing about their interest area using various text structures and features. To enhance the activity and to further ensure that students understand features and structures in informational text, Kim will have them highlight the words in the passages they have written that are key in identifying the structures.

Kim has given a pre-test and by our next meeting will have given the post test to determine student growth.