Lesson Study Cycle 2
Interesting Inferences
Our Lesson
This lesson was for a small group of 6th grade learners, working to understand how to make inferences from texts by using their life experiences to make connections. Kelsey Seale's small group was engaging in a lesson series all about inferences. This lesson fell after students had been exposed to the definition of inferences through an engaging video and worksheet to help them understand the concept. Students then read a short story and made inferences as a group about what might happen next in the story. They then reinforced their knowledge and practiced these skills in a group game. In this lesson, we wanted to answer our question: how can we support all learners in a group to share their thoughts and collaborate?
In this lesson, learners first engaged in a mood check-in. They then reviewed prior learning about inferences before listening to the start of a story. Students were instructed to close their eyes and visualize the story in order to remove distractions and allow students' imaginations to take over. Students then read the story to themselves, and were asked to highlight sections which gave them information about the story. They were then given sticky notes, on which they were asked to write an idea of how the story could end. After discussion and debate, students then decided whether each story end was realistic (based on inference) or unrealistic, and sorted them into these categories.
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Our Goals
Content understanding goal:
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Students will understand how to make inferences from texts by using their life experiences to make connections to the text.
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Students will be able to use the inferences they make to create the middle and end of a short story.
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Equity goal:
We will create a flow of lessons that are consistent, predictable, and accessible to each student, that incorporates aspects of the interests and cultures of each individual.
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Our Research
Research question/equity theme: How do we foster a sense of belonging and solidarity to enhance students’ self efficacy as readers and writers in a way that allows them to feel empowered to use their voice?
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Theory of Action: If we as slow release the beginning of a story and facilitate discussion, then students will create inferences to draft a middle and ending, resulting in students presenting a story with excitement and confidence.
Our Students
Focal Student #1
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Assets: An enthusiastic and creative learner, FS1 remains engaged in schoolwork despite distractions. He has excellent comprehension of written text.
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Needs: FS1 struggles to decode text
Focal Student #2
Assets: FS2 is an ELL learner who has become adept at decoding words accurately. Her reading goals of increased fluency align with her verbal participation in class.
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Needs: FS2 is quiet and reserved in class, and can use teacher support and prompting to volunteer her ideas.
Focal Student #3
Assets: FS3 is an energetic and resourceful learner, and actively engages with others both on the sports field and in small groups.
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Needs: His IEP goals are focused around reading, writing, spelling, math, task-initiation and on-task behavior.
Student Work
Analysis and Reflections
The major takeaways that I have from this lesson study:
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Social Nets can hold up Individual Needs In middle school, kids are simultaneously forming their personal and social identities. During this lesson, two of our students leaned heavily on these social networks, building off of each other's thoughts, jokes, and questions. Our third student was more reserved, and was invited to speak by Kelsey for many of her verbal contributions. Even with prompting, she spoke only 25 times, as compared to her peers' 55 and 61 contributions. It seemed clear that the two friends had a leg-up on the lesson - they were able to build each other up, build off of each other's thoughts, and build new creative ideas tied with novel learning. As teachers, attending to adolescent students' social needs through thoughtful partnerships, peer conflict resolution, and collaboration can allow greater growth in their individual academic needs.
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Decide: Who is my student's stillness for? - Our students each picked a fidget toy on their way into class, and my breath caught a little in my throat. I taught FS1 the prior year, and knew first-hand what his brilliance would bring next. Throughout the lesson, he played with the toy in both expected and unexpected ways. By the end of Kelsey's lesson, he had disassembled the spinning ball toy, added some post-it notes and brilliantly rebuilt it into a working helicopter. Because I was tasked with recording his learning, I was invited to try to ignore this fidgeting (more accurately, engineering) - to turn down the volume on that, and to just listen to his thoughts. In them, he expressed prior learning, made new connections, taught others, and creatively problem solved. In a new way, it stunned me how completely he was attending to both tasks at hand - his school learning and his engineering task simultaneously. Kelsey's ease in allowing him both paths let him to relax his brain enough to laugh and enjoy each one. I remember times in his fifth grade year when I attempted to teach him skills that would help build his executive functioning, and how those efforts were likely as challenging as the trickiest math problems. I also remember times when these efforts would overlap, and I'd encourage him to maintain a single focus while also learning new skills. Watching him thrive in both states at once reminded me to ask myself and continually balance: am I requiring my students to sit still because it benefits them or the greater class, or because it benefits my comfort?
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Highlighters and Sticky Notes: Still Great - The simple addition of highlighters and sticky notes - two affordable, readily available supplies - opened up this lesson and gave students some necessary supports. As our students reached for their tools to highlight key words in their text or quickly scrawl ideas for a story ending, it was easy to imagine their future adult selves benefitting. With a couple of supplies handy, they will be able to highlight key information and keep track of many ideas with a structure they've already successfully adopted and practiced in class.