Reflections

My lessons were focused in Writing Workshop. While, I had originally planned them with Nicole, I ended up having to condense the bulk of my punctuation lessons into four days. Instead of teaching each piece of punctuation separately my CT and I decided that, for our class, it would be best to maintain as much routine as possible. We were both very skeptical of how the class would do with some of the more outrageous lessons we had originally planned.

Day one: I introduced the main ideas of punctuation and had the class work on a separate sheet of paper just keeping in mind the conversation of punctuation. The class had a conversation about periods, question marks, quotation marks, and exclamation marks. We discussed what they mean and then the students set off to work. Their samples from the first day showed some consideration about using punctuation. From these I knew we needed to focus a little bit more on exactly what punctuation looks like in a sample of writing.

Day two: For this mini lesson, I prepared a writing sample similar to the work the students regularly do (stories about their lives). I wrote a story with a beginning, middle, and end, and also some of the other writing strategies they have been focusing on like using similes. In this writing I included different types of punctuation throughout the piece. After I read it to the class, we went through and highlighted the different spots with punctuation. We went through and found how it helped make the piece easier to read, understand, and kept it organized. For their focus during writing workshop they were to write about anything and keep focusing on using punctuation. These papers were better. Some of the students started noticing patterns with their own writing and could start thinking about where they needed to add in the proper punctuation.

Day three: As a final step for the recognition of punctuation I created a poster which outlined all of the different types of punctuation. The poster has columns for what it is, what is the purpose of it, and when to use it. We discussed the whole poster and whether or not they agreed with the statements. After looking at the poster the students were able to see the punctuation in a different way. Their writing showed increased attention to the punctuation.

I was able to conference with all of the students in the last two days. I tried to use this time to clarify any questions the students had, to check their use of the punctuation, and to find out what strategies the students were using while writing. I found that I could share some of these strategies to help the other students.

From now on, the students are expected to pay attention and use punctuation in all of their writing. I will continue to check in with the students to make sure that they are still using the punctuation properly.

I liked being able to take a few days to have the students just start to use the strategy we were introducing. Then show an example for the students to dissect and analyze. Finally, having a full discussion and lesson about punctuation. It was interesting being able to conference in with the students and read their daily work to see their progression in understanding the concept.