Last week in my field placement, my first graders were asked to make a concept map about "telling the truth" and to then construct sentences from the phrases written in the concept map. My CT drew a concept map on the board as a template for the students to follow and even helped them make the map, filling in ideas with their help. She then told the first graders that they could add more legs to the concept map or they could use the one on the board to create their sentences, whichever works best for them.
My CT is very good about involving me in her classroom instruction and activities, which I love because it provides me with excellent experience in various types of situations and lessons. However, this activity turned out to be very frustrating for me, even though I know her intentions were good.
After introducing the assignment to the students, my CT simply sat down at a table and asked me to go around the room to help the students create their sentences. Once I felt the students were ready, I was to send them over to my CT's table for feedback. This task was very difficult for me because my first graders are at extremely low levels in writing. Even my CT has admitted that she has never had a class that has gotten this far behind in their reading and writing levels before. My first graders have trouble reading simple words that they should definitely know by now, let alone writing them on paper.
About 75% of my class struggled with this assignment. Even though they all know what sentences are and they all know what constitutes a sentence, the majority of the class was simply just copying phrases down straight from the concept map onto their paper. When I tried to explain to them that they needed to construct sentences and even gave them models to follow, the students made no progress.
My frustration by the end of the assignment was not triggered by the students themselves, but by myself because I was unable to help all of them in completing their sentences. I did not know how to even begin helping an entire class like that to write sentences from a concept map and this frustrated me. I'd say that 10 students out of about 28 completed the assignment correctly.
To me, using concept mapping at a first grade level is a very difficult task to grasp. I am curious to see what you guys think about this!
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
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1 comments:
This is an interesting story Ashleigh! I think you have tuned in to a couple of possible issues here.
Your students are still unsure how they should *use* the concept map tool to write their sentences. Perhaps they need some additional scaffolding?
Also, your students are struggling with their writing. What are they independently producing when they journal or write otherwise? Are they independently writing at the sentence length?
Given how the concept map task went, if you had the chance to re-design it, what would you do differently? Would you change the task or adjust the requirements? What would help your students achieve more success?
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