Final Analysis of 4th Grade Student

The following is my final thoughts on my 4th grader.  Thanks to all who commented on my ideas.  They were all greatly appreciated.

I was lucky enough to have three little birdies chirping over my shoulder the past couple of days.  I felt like Uncle Remus whistling with the butterflies as he walked down the dirt path – carefree and ready for life. 

Then, like Uncle Remus, I realized I live in American society and the boundary lines for what we can and cannot do have already been drawn.  Meaning Uncle Remus was an African American living in the south and I am a student teacher who wants to think outside the box.  Luckily the little birdies were there to steer me towards an idea that came from….our textbook….yuck!  That idea is something called the “Optimal Learning Model” designed by Reggie Routman, a self proclaimed master of the reading arts.  This model takes Vygotsky’s ideas and puts them to work in 4 main parts:  Teacher modeling, guided practice, independent practice, and finally application of the strategy.  The big question is how I could fit this sumptuous model into my lesson plan.  Here’s how:

The teacher brings in a 10 word list of his own and with ideas from the students creates a quick 2 paragraph creative story using each of the words on the list.  Once the draft is complete the teacher rereads the story out loud looking for any choppy sentence flow as well as grammatical errors. 

To transition into guided practice, the teacher will hand out the 25 word list to the students.  He will take the top two words on the list and as a class they will come up with multiple ideas that can be progressed into a story.  Since “Carrot” and “Group” were two words my student misspelled consistently they can be used as an example here.  The teacher could say “What about a group of bunnies hopping along when they come upon a batch of carrots?”  The teacher would reread the sentence with the students so they understand the process of what they are about to do.

The transfer of responsibility would occur at this point when the teacher says “Game on!” and the students continue the process on their own.  The teacher walks around watching the progression of the creative ideas being written onto papers across the room, as well as answering any questions that might be asked.

The application of the strategy would come when they revise their drafts.

That would be an example of the Optimal Learning Model :(

Now that I have incorporated Ms. Routman into my lesson, I want to “redump” my thoughts about my student’s writing based on the eclectic samples I have been able to research.  I believed in his creativity because his original writing sample told me multiple times he was creative and loved art.  His story about talking dogs expressed his ability to write out his thoughts of a scene as it unfolds.  It felt like I was reading a screen play, “I told them I would put them back in their cage if they weren’t quiet.  I fell asleep.  When I woke up the birds only chirped…”  He was great at telling the reader what was happening at every moment in time.  At one point in the story he opened up by writing “Evan wanted to fly like the birds”.  It was the first, and only, time his creativity entered the realm of emotions going on inside his characters head.  He needed a LOT more of this to capture the reader’s attention.  I might be reading too much into this but it makes sense that for a student who is writing a scene involving continuously moving action, his brain might get a little ahead of itself.  He is always thinking of what is going to happen next and this distracts his brain from focusing on the conventions of the writing (spelling, structure, punctuation) that was going on the paper now.  This idea makes me feel better about forcing him to fit 25 correctly spelled words into a sentence.  I would make sure at least 10 of the words are adjectives that might push him to describe more of what is in the scene, as opposed to just what is going on in the scene. 

Looking forward, if I were the teacher for this student, I would add a lot of creative writing to the curriculum as the practice of writing will help him connect his ideas with examples.  I would also bring computer lab into the writing process because of the spell check feature of MS Word.  The more he types the more he’ll see corrections that need to be made.  Practice makes perfect and the more he is encourages to read and write, the more comfortable he’ll feel about showing off his work in front of others.  Being proud of his work would be the ultimate goal in any work we would do in the classroom for this student. 

Cheerio