Lesson #2 Reflection

What students learned and what students struggled with the lesson?

It appears only about 8 of my students (which happened to be spread in the higher level reading groups) truly grasped what a paraphrase and how to do it. A majority of my students when asked told me what a paraphrase was, but then had trouble actually paraphrasing. It was not just my students that struggle with comprehension, it was students that excel with comprehension, who had trouble understanding they had to change more than just one or two words. My ELL students struggled, which is completely understandable because they are still learning English, let alone trying to put something in English into their own words.

What are alternate reads of your students' performance or products?

I listened to students as they discussed their paraphrases, and how the decided to change each word. I read that some students had heard of paraphrasing before from an older sibling. I saw students use resources, such as dictionaries or glossaries to find synonyms or others words to use. I saw them underlining important key words that cannot be changed in a paraphrase. I collected there paraphrases worksheets to have an alternate read of a final product. I also tried to have conferences with students as they individually paraphrased, to see if they were paraphrasing verbally.

What did you learn about your students' literacy practices that extend beyond the objectives?

I learned that some of my students are monitoring their comprehension without explicitly saying they are. I learned that my students understood the difference between a summary and a main idea, as they told me as they paraphrased. I learned that many of my students understood how to find the important key words. They would tell me in conversation, “I can’t change Atlantic Ocean”. They understood the 

importance of these words to the paraphrase.

When and how will you re-teach the material to students who need additional support?

Since many of my students struggled with the paraphrasing worksheet, we are going to revisit it as a class at the beginning of the lesson tomorrow. I have asked a couple students that demonstrated a clear understanding of it, as well as a clear ability to do it, to share their examples and explain what they did. I am also going to go over examples as a class again, and revisit the notes they took. I am going to ask them to look back at their paraphrase worksheet and try to revise two of the five paraphrases. My hope is that with more examples, and some student-led examples, paraphrasing will have become more clear. 

If you were to teach this same lesson again, what would you do differently and how do you think the changes would improve students’ learning?

I would include more examples in my mini-lesson, as well as have more discussion as a whole-class of what we are doing. Due to time, students were just wrapping up the paraphrase worksheet, when it was time to come whole-group again. I would have liked their to be more small student conferences, because I think they could have learned more from each other. Tomorrow when we revisit the lesson, I am going to share a video where Big Bird repeats every single thing the radio says word for word. We will have a discussion how this is the exact opposite of paraphrasing. We will take this example further by explaining, even changing one word is not paraphrasing. I feel it was critical that I have more examples.

What did you learn so far about implementing your ‘core practice’ and what do you need to do to continue your professional learning?

I learned how crucial paraphrasing is to monitoring comprehension. I have always known this because through my school years I have always taken a moment to reflect on what I read to make sure I could tell someone about it, in my own words. I have never thought of how explicitly teaching that to students could be beneficial. I mentioned this to my students, that paraphrasing after reading is a way to check their comprehension. As I mentioned, many of my students didn’t quite get comprehension. For example, if they did change the words, they lost the meaning of the main ideas. I learned that my core practice of monitoring comprehension, often involves strategies that come naturally to me, but are more difficult to explicitly teach and show.