Report on an Instructional Conversation

Report on Instructional Conversation

I selected my focus student and two other students from his class to be on a "committee" to prepare materials for preparing the class to read a chapter in our current class book – Ice Story: Shackleton’s Lost Expedition. I don’t always know which words and concepts will disrupt understanding for my seventh grade students, so having a small group of students help me prepare for the chapter is very helpful. Also, those students will be experts on that chapter.

Lexile Levels for my target student and for the book:
K.C. tests at lexile level 583 (about 3rd grade) as of March 2009.
Ice Story: Shackleton’s Lost Expedition: The text is 1130L which is about mid tenth grade, but it is heavily supported with pictures and maps, and is being scaffolded by the teacher.

K.C.'s reading level was determined using the Scholastic Reading Inventory, and I looked up the lexile level of the text at lexile.com.

During class, while the students were reading earlier chapters in small groups and preparing timelines of what had happened so far, we went to the computer lab, which wasn’t being used.

Learning Activity
Students and teacher will prepare a list of vocabulary and other things students need to know for reading chapter 14 of Ice Story: Shackleton’s Lost Expedition. We started out looking for vocabulary that might get in the way of students’ understanding. We discussed how you can figure out a word that’s unfamiliar.

Goals
• Prepare actual information for any teacher who would be teaching chapter 14 of Ice Story.
• Assess student awareness of vocabulary and awareness of strategies to figure out what unfamiliar words mean.
• As needed, teach students about strategies to figure out the meanings of unfamiliar words in a text.

Materials Needed
-- Copies of the book Ice Story: Shackleton’s Lost Expedition
-- A pencil or pen for each student
-- A handout-chart for each student, and one for the teacher, on which to record unfamiliar words and concepts, meanings, and how we knew or found out what the real meanings were
-- Dictionaries or access to an online dictionary
-- Tape recorder and blank tape if desired to record the conversation

What I Learned about K.C.’s Understanding
K.C. knows a lot of vocabulary. He had heard a couple of the unfamiliar words before, and was able to figure out meaning from the way he’d heard them used. He also understands how to look at the parts of a word to try to figure out its meaning. He was able to look up words from an online dictionary. He was willing to share in the small group what he knew and thought.

The students took turns reading aloud as we looked for unfamiliar words, so I was able to notice also how he read aloud. He doesn’t know how to pronounce “island” or “even,” and stumbled over the pronunciation of many words.

K.C. already knew some strategies for finding the meaning of unfamiliar words, and he was the one who at the end of our conversation volunteered a summary of strategies we’d used during the conversation.

What I Learned About Using Instructional Conversation
I learned how hard it is to keep myself from monopolizing the conversation – to instead find ways to draw out the students. The conversation was very valuable because of what I found out about the students, and because I felt the instruction I gave was more effective in a small group than it would have been whole-class. One student in the group has a higher reading level than the other two, so she knew more, but gave the others chances to talk. There were words that she also didn't know. I was able to ask some questions that got the students to think, to look at the words and the text to figure out meanings.


We used a chart titled "Vocabulary for Ice Story -- Chapter 14"
with three columns labeled --
Word and Page, Meaning, How you knew


Here is how these three students summarized --
What do the students need to know to read chapter 14?
1. What happened before – in the book –
2. What to do if they run into a word they don’t know –
a. look back
b. look ahead
c. look it up
d. talk about it
e. break it into parts
f. think about similar words or similar sounds
g. think about if and how you’ve heard it before