6. Submit a Log

I think this worked well as a review to tie the concept together. Functions tend to be a difficult subject for Pre Algebra students since it tends to be abstract. The concept mastery allowed them to see how the  pieces fit together. I liked having the pictures of the functions as cut outs so that they could sort them.  I liked that we used it in a station teaching activity. The small group made it easy to monitor and make sure all students were participating.

The biggest challenge I had was making sure they brought up all the items and terms I needed them to! I think you have to have good questioning skills to direct the discussion.

Next time I think I would incorporate some "think-pair-share" moments so that students could have time to discuss before i solicited information from them. 

In developing the Concept Mastery Routine to use with my students, I put more time and thought into creating the teacher copy than I realized I would need. My co-teaching partner was invaluable in helping to develop the teacher copies. We revisited the routine a number of times before we even taught it. In using the Concept Mastery Routine with my students for the first time, it took longer than expected to get through the entire routine. I thought we could complete it in a class period; however, some classes had such great discussions that it took two class periods to finish. Another challenge I faced was helping the students understand the sometimes characteristics as well as developing good examples and nonexamples. Also, in meeting with my T-TAC coaches, they showed me a better routine to use for certain topics rather than the Concept Mastery Routine which I really wanted to use. 

On thing that did go well was that the Concept Mastery Routine had the students engaged, participating, and debating which was a pleasant bonus. In addition, as we have read different passages, they have been able to identify the characteristics about nonfiction and fiction. At times, they have pointed these out without me asking first. They have retained the information better as a result. 

For the next time that I use this routine, I will give the students more of an opportunity to work either on their own or in small groups to develop the overall concept, additional characteristics, and a definition. I need to step back and see what they can do and understand that I can go back and help them to make changes as needed. They need to see that they can create some pieces of this routine on their own first.

One thing that went very well was how quickly the students caught onto the routine.  We've used CMR for 7 different lessons so far.  Using this routine not only helps the students organize information so that they are likely to retain it but it also helped me with organization of information.  I can refer back to a Concept Diagram to remind students about specific information or to aid in comparing and contrasting concepts that are related.  The most challenging aspect for me is knowing if an overall concept is an acceptable topic for this routine.  My co-teacher and I had several concepts that our coaches had informed us would be better taught using the Framing Routine.  We adjusted our Concept Diagrams to to show more comprehensive and difficult ideas compared to our original concepts.  In the future, we also need to have the students come up with the overall concept with less input from us.  Previously, we were giving them this information to put on their diagrams.

I think the initial implementation of the diagram was "messy" but students participated well. They will anticipate the final product more completely with the next unit, so I expect their suggestions during the lesson will be more on point.
Link to log: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2B8GvAFCXAbY2dmVHowUGpHZE0/view?usp=sharing

At first I thought that it would be too much writing (and too small spaces) for some of my students with special needs.  However, I tried to build in some "slow down and catch up" time. I also popped out of the video frame a few times to check on those students.  Seating them near me helped as I could see quickly if they were behind.  At the end, I also had planned on giving a copy to those that were unable to keep up or were hard to read because of the spacing.  It went much better than anticipated.  Some of our students had the most problems things that were not found.  So, we adjusted as needed. 

Mrs. Hodges and I teach English 8, and we are hurriedly preparing our students for the Writing 8 SOL which takes place on March 14th and 15th. We implemented the concept diagram on February 8th to describe essential characteristics of essay writing in written composition. We were very pleased with how engaged students were in the process and the level of critical thinking skills evident by classroom discussion. On the following day, students were able to recall essential essay characteristics resulting from the completion of the concept diagram. In terms of what challenges we faced, next time I will try to ask more open-ended questions during the co-construction phrase with the class. I found I was asking questions that were more guiding in nature. Overall, we are very pleased with the students' level of retention, and we plan on implementing another concept diagram for essay writing in the next week!

Recreating the Concept Diagram re: Percents went fairly well.  One class did get hung up on the ‘cent’ part of percent and gave a lot of examples for that but we were able to move past it eventually.  Another class could not generate ‘Never Present’ so we saved that for the end.  By doing that, students were able to clearly name the ‘Never Present’ examples quickly and easily.  We will keep this mind for future Diagrams.  We really liked what an eye opener it was for some students when we referred back to this Diagrams at the end of the Percent unit.  Some were able to make better connections when a number has a percent sign and when it does not.

We spent approximately 2 hours preparing the lesson, which included discussion of the terms we wished to define with students and several drafts to choose the best order of activities. Overall, the lesson contained a small amount of direct instruction to introduce Romanticism in general and then a significant amount of student interaction. Most of the interaction was short discussion, including suggesting and verifying examples.
I thought the direct instruction was effectively implemented wit the initial presentation. Both students and teachers contributed examples and tested them against the details in the "Always/Sometimes/Never Present" columns. We utilized the testing ground as well. In general, students enjoy Gothic literature, so they were eager participants.

A change to consider for this lesson would be presenting it after we had read 1 or 2 more stories from the literary period. This would have given us clearer non examples from other Romantic writers so the contrast wold be more obvious and highlight Gothic characteristics more easily.

On the attempt in the video, students had discussed the content covered by the routine prior to implementation. This introduction allowed students to become more active participants in the creation of the routine. Students were able to successfully generate a list of keywords that could be used while working through the routine. Students participated well with the sorting of characteristics and with the examples. A sentence starter was used to get the students started on the definition. With students given the starter it helped them to generate some good definitions. In other classes I found the students needed the starter that is why it was given in the class videoed. I also found that the definition was too far down the page for students in larger classes to see, that is why the definition was done on another slide.  

I think it went very well.  The kids responded well to the review. We thought that we might have to prompt them more to get them in the direction we wanted them to go but they did an excellent job with the vocabulary.