Amanda's Reflection on my Lesson and Unit:

Today I had the pleasure of having Cheryl come in to visit!  Before she came in students were working on recalling the "who, what and where" of their small moment personal narrative books.  These past two weeks the students have been working very hard on their books, and have brainstormed, edited  revised and now created final products!  Today some students had trouble recalling what their book was about, but I anticipated this since these two students have been finding first grade challenging.  I helped them for this unit by scripting their books (they tell me their story, I write it for them, and then they copy the text).  Cheryl had told me today that she liked this idea of changing the process but attaining the same product.  It was also exciting to hear that students had told her they were excited to share their final drafts at our publishing party tomorrow!  She also noticed that students were staying engaged throughout our writing block, which tells me students were devoted to their work, and took pride in their work.  I think I learned a lot about my students during this lesson today in seeing how they view their work.  Many students still had spelling mistakes, but had fixed capitol letters, punctuation, word wall spelling, and complete thoughts!  Students were excited to make a book to share with the class and I learned that students are more likely to stay on task and work excitedly when they have an end goal in mind.  If I were to reteach this lesson again I would probably give students their writing books to refer too during the "who, what, where chart", because today I had them recall from their memory, but this seemed challenging to most students.  I found discussing their plots of their book with them sparked their memory, and this also allowed me to become aware of how closely I had worked with each student that I would recall their specific story and details!  I think I could still strengthen my "core practice" of developing strong mini lessons for my students.  I also have learned over the course of this unit that things will not go according to plan, even though you may have planned for your specific grade level.  I had to take into consideration what my specific class was capable in achieving and I think today's lesson of finalizing final drafts was successful because I monitored students achievement along the way and students were able to obtain the end goal!  Setting students up for achievement is something I strive to do in order to create positive learning experiences.