I chose to teach the Word Mapping Strategy to a fellow special education teacher at my middle school. She is licensed in math and reading and has taught both. She is interested in the SIM model and was eager to learn a strategy. She teaches 7th and 8th grade in both the resource and inclusion settings. She is only in her second year of teaching and is eager to add instructional strategies in her tool box.
One thing that went well was the excitement around the SIM model, I am deeply interested in raising adolescent literacy with an actual plan. Therefore, this excitement was transferred to her as she began to teach the strategy. Another thing that went well was the level of detail that the SIM materials include. She felt confident to implement when she saw the level of instructional support. We talked through paraphrasing some of the instructional talking points and I told her that she could simply read them verbatim the first time. She struggled a bit at first getting a handle on following a structure but once she got through the first few lessons the group went well. Another positive is that we setup the student notebooks together so she was ready to implement and had a better understanding of the strategy.
Since she is a new teacher she tends to become nervous when being observed so when I would “walk through” during her instruction she would become somewhat flustered and apologize for errors. So we talked about her recording her own instruction and reporting back to me with positives and questions. This allowed her to feel more comfortable. One thing I will point out from the beginning are the tricksters and the suffix spelling rules. I quickly went over that and I realized that if a teacher does not know these that lesson can be difficult. Perhaps an anchor chart for students and teachers would be helpful.
I tried not only to be available to my SIM mentee but also, planned several small meetings to check in with her implementation. One problem that arose during her implementation of the Word Map strategy was she had one student who was unable to score 80% mastery on the identifying prefix lesson. I advised her to conference with the student and complete separating the prefix #1 with just the one struggling student. Then, had the student complete the #2 sheet again, then he was able to earn 80% mastery. We discussed the importance of reaching mastery and upholding SIM fidelity. Once my SIM mentee reached the point to put it all together, she felt a bit unprepared to map words, predict the meaning and see if it is correct. Next time, I think I will provide a few more words mapped out and a short explanation of how that is the correct definition.
Plan to have blank color coded morpheme glossaries in the student notebooks, that way when we encounter new ones the students can add them easily. Also, next time I teach the strategy, I need to spend a bit more time devoted to the research base of SIM in general and Word Mapping specifically. That way they can confidently share the why of learning this strategy. Also, like previous identified, I will provide several completed word maps for the potential word map instructor. Also, guiding teachers to complete their own copy of completed notes and an answer key for student activities, makes assessing easier and more efficient.