Jane+Blevins

Please respond to the following: 1. How has reading, writing, thinking, and talking affected your learning today? The strategies of underlining and marking the text helped me to focus on the reading. Having a partner helps in thinking aloud and writing about the ideas that we shared. When I have used these strategies in class, and when students have a chance to use these strategies in their own readings, they indicate that they can "learn better."
 * Collaborative Group Work Exit Slip**

2. Return to your Reflection sheet and make additions to CGW. Thank you for your participation and enthusiasm today.

**Writing to Learn Exit Slip** Please respond to the following: 1. How can writing to learn be used as an assessment tool? There are many opportunities for writing to learn in an English class, including low-stakes and high-stakes writing. I use journals, exit slips, and "minute papers" (take a minute and write a fact or a question.

2. How would you use low stakes writing? I use low stakes writing to measure what students know or learn from a class. I use journals to get students writing -- to get used to expressing themselves. When students write at this level, they are more willing and feel more comfortable about writing essays.

3. Write one question you would ask about what you learned today? Why are so many non-English teachers reluctant to use writing to learn activities?

**Classroom Talk Exit Slip** 1. How can increasing student talk affect student learning? Second Semester: Increase peer editing from two to four per group for evaluation of writing. Seminar-type discussions of literature. Each student brings a question and the group responds without teacher input. Groups of 4 to 6 completing "Do-Now" for teaching grammar skills.

2. Which required teacher skill would you choose for your focus area? Explain what you will do to improve that skill. Questioning: Using a seminar approach in world literature, I would like for students to be able to generate the types of questions that will require them to read for understanding and learn to ask those types of questions that will make them want to know more than the simple plot of a story. If they can learn to ask the "essential questions," then they will be able to write the types of analysis papers that they will need to do in their college classes.

**Questioning Exit Slip**

1. Each person reviews the Questioning Lesson Plan and makes 2 observations about the questioning techniques used in the plan.

Teaching literature analysis requires teachers to generate better questions. The "Who is the main character?" and "What is the climax of the story?" questions are replaced by "How does the setting of the story contribute to the mood that the author creates?" or "Using the speech of the chorus in Scene 2, generate a definition of stytomythic speech?"

2. Go back to your reflection for today, how will you integrate questioning techniques?

Once the class has become familiar the play (through a first reading), then I write questions which will cause the students to think beyond the initial knowledge questions. They will then find evidence in the work that will support their answers -- without those types of questions with answers that are "fill in the blank" or "yes, no."

3. How could questioning affect Classroom Talk?

In group-work, I have noticed that the students expect more from each other -- there is very demonstration of "how? what?" Discussions involve the "why did you say that?" and "where does it say that?" of literary analysis.

Scaffolding

1. How would the use of scaffolding support the WTL and Questioning strategies? Students begin with what they know, and then they add new concepts to their knowledge. As a part of this scaffolding, they may use Write to Learn and begin to develop their own questions about what they have learned. As they progress in the scaffolding process, they will go from students who have limited knowledge, to students who are learning a new concept, to group participants who will discuss that concept, and finally to students who are able to respond to the original questions with some confidence.

2. What scaffolding techniques will you try this week? I will use Annotating the Text and Listening to Voice.

Literacy Groups