Series Collaborating to Plan & Teach Gifted ELA: Working Together to Reflect & Adjust Lessons

Working Together to Reflect & Adjust Lessons

Lesson Objective: Collaborate to debrief and plan lessons
Grades 3-5 / ELA / Gifted
9 MIN

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Discussion and Supporting Materials

Thought starters

  1. How do these teachers collaborate despite being at different schools?
  2. How does Ms. Chism reflect on how she would change the lesson when teaching it again?
  3. How does Ms. Gaten learn from Ms. Chism's reflections?

7 Comments

  • Private message to Jeremy Alexander

  1. They collaborate by agreeing on similar techniques. They can tweak each other's lessons to their own classroom.

2. Ms. Chism would go over assumptions and implications in more detail if she were to teach the lesson again.

 3. Mrs. Gaten decided to use the reasoning wheel in her lesson because of Ms. Chism's input.

Recommended (0)
  • Private message to Reb Tam
Thanks for being real in front of the camera. I appreciate that :-)
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  • Private message to Berky Lugo Salcedo
I thank you both for sharing your work with other educators who may simply need to 'see' what collaboration looks like.
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  • Private message to Sally Hernandez-Jimenez
Great inquiry conversation that brought up specific strategies used to improve the instruction. Wonderful models of collaboration.
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  • Private message to Susan Aull
Great team work!
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Transcripts

  • Working Together to Reflect & Adjust Lessons Transcript

    [00:00:00;00] - [00:08:56;02]

    Debora Gaten (in class): What images do you see from that

    Working Together to Reflect & Adjust Lessons Transcript

    [00:00:00;00] - [00:08:56;02]

    Debora Gaten (in class): What images do you see from that first slide? Okay, Layla?

    Debora Gaten: I'm Dr. Debora Gaten. This is Dr. Sherwanda Chism.

    Sherwanda Chism: Dr. Gaten and I plan together. We teach different students in different schools but we plan together. Collaboration is built into our program. There are certain Fridays where we meet together and we talk about what works and what didn't work in our curriculum.

    [00:00:41;09]

    Sherwanda Chism: Debora, today we did the lesson on the great migration. You know, we've been...

    Debora Gaten: Sherwanda and I collaborated on this particular unit about the great migration and the Harlem Renaissance. Part of the lesson that we've done already is an introductory lesson where we introduce the students to the vocabulary. We want them to know what Renaissance mean, we want them to know about the Great Migration. In my classroom, we're comparing and contrasting two poems written by Langston Hughes. They were to look for imagery using figurative language and talk about their emotions.

    Sherwanda Chism: In my classroom, we're using our brainstorming strategy to come up with stakeholders and students analyze from the point of view of all the stakeholders that were involved in the great migration. In this unit, students will engage in text, they will do creative writing, they will do some creative problem-solving. They will apply, analyze and evaluate.

    Sherwanda Chism (in class): I want you to use the knowledge that you've gained from the different texts to list stakeholders. Stakeholders from the Great Migration in your composition book.

    [00:01:58;04]

    Sherwanda Chism: I think my children understood that the different stakeholders have different points of view. I still think that we are a little --- I guess, cloudy when it comes to assumptions or understanding assumptions. So, I think when we use this again, we carve out some time when we just really go over the terms, assumptions. And we really go over implications because we have to make sure - because there's a very important part of the graphic organizer, of them understanding the differences in the point of view.

    Debora Gaten: Do you think that you might move that part of the study to what you did today or will you leave it in the same place?

    Sherwanda Chism: I think it's best to leave it where it is because, remember, we titled the days.

    Debora Gaten: The name of our gifted education program is CLUE: Creative Learning in a Unique Environment.

    Sherwanda Chism: And it's a pull-out program where children are pulled out of the traditional classroom to be served.

    Debora Gaten: Sherwanda and I have different students. I'm in an all-optional school where students have to actually apply. It's a different dynamic so we took some of the things that we were using and we tweaked them to apply them to our particular students.

    Sherwanda Chism: You know, I want the graphic organizer to be a success. I want them to get out of it what I expect from the to get out of it but I think I got --- I must provide more support, maybe even using the words, "assumptions" and "implications" in a Frayer model --- using as a vocabulary lesson, I think would help them better - to complete it and to complete it with accuracy.

    [00:03:28;23]

    Debora Gaten: So, would you use the Frayer model, here? As you're doing that particular lesson?

    Sherwanda Chism: Well, I could have. I think it may have --- I guess I was afraid that I would take away from the flow and the actual part of the lesson. They understood but I just want to give them more support so that the graphic organizer can do what it's supposed to do. You know? I want us to look at using different graphic organizers that do the same thing. To give them an opportunity to see it in a different way. I'm thinking for day 7, we get to reasoning again --- that we use a reasoning wheel. The Reasoning Wheel. The Richard Paul's Reasoning Wheel.

    Debora Gaten: I think that's a good idea because you don't want them to get to the point where they're like, "ok, I'm just gonna write this down because I'm so used to it. Just kind of switch it up. It worked out well, I'm glad I used that graphic organizer that she suggested.

    Sherwanda Chism: I'm glad you changed it so now I'll have that to help me when it's time for me to give that assignment to my students. I was expecting them to give me more but they gave me what they could give me based on what they had. Do you have any suggestions on what I could do?

    Debora Gaten: You might want to move that brain pop video up instead of putting it down here because --- even though you assume that knew certain things, because it was in the literature, actually seeing it, reading it and seeing it are two different things so maybe we should look at this and move the video up.

    [00:04:57;11]

    Sherwanda Chism: I can show the video next class meeting. And then, we can reason again and that way they'll have the opportunity to use that video as a text to reason about the different stakeholders from the video. It just gives them the opportunity to experience those words against others -- that is a good idea.

    Debora Gaten: This is gonna help me do my lesson for tomorrow because I might run into some of the same situations where I'm assuming that they know certain things and they actually don't so I'm moving this down here, I'm taking the creative problem-solving activity and changing it a little bit to...

    Sherwanda Chism: The creative problem-solving. Well, there has to be a text to go with it and common core's all about building background and building foundations of knowledge through rich text. We search for these rich texts to teach our children how to do close reads and use higher order thinking strategies throughout our study using the common core standards. Do you suggest, in our curriculum guide, that we move this --- move dreams?

    Debora Gaten: I'm not certain that we should move it, but for my particular students, I think this is going to work better.

    Sherwanda Chism: And I'm thinking dreams would fit better with change because you're analyzing the points and the differences because you know, they're written by the same author. His dream does change. So, I do think that's a good idea.

    [00:06:18;17]

    Sherwanda Chism: I believe everybody benefits from collaboration and that students are definitely gonna benefit if you're successful and I can implement it the way in which you wrote it or however you designed then my students are gonna be successful.

    Debora Gaten: When they're actually doing the critique, how do you think you're critique worked today?

    Sherwanda Chism: Today, we used different stems. We used the "I noticed" and "I wonder." I think those are safe because I want them to feel safe when someone critiques them and then I want them to safely critique --- I don't want them to --- the object is not to hurt or to harm... sometimes, collaboration can cut down in the times that teachers spend on writing units or on planning lessons because if someone has done an awesome job already, why not use them as a resource? Have you thought about how you are gonna critique, or....

    Debora Gaten: I have thought about --- they're gonna do a self-assessment and they're gonna do a group assessment but then I want them to actually critique the lesson --- that way, it will help me to frame the lesson in a different way. We can change it a little bit. We can tweak certain things that they like. Things that they think we should change. And they're gonna do a group critique.

    Sherwanda Chism: You know, that's something I did not do. I did not have them to critique the group that they were in. Cause we critiqued the lesson, we may critique some work but the group --- a lot of the work is group work and one our strategies is group discussion and group dynamics. I think, with grouping being such a huge point, I think that that's one of the things that I'm gonna do in the future. I'm gonna develop a group critique.

    Debora Gaten: Sherwanda and I collaborating has so many benefits because you have two minds coming together.

    Sherwanda Chism: I am all over the place and Dr. Gaten is to the point. I appreciate her being to the point and bringing me back in. And her preparedness. She's always prepared. And always ready and so I do definitely appreciate that because that balances.

    [00:08:31;10]

    Debora Gaten: It's a nice mix. It's a nice collaboration because we complement each other.

    [00:08:56;02]

    END

School Details

Winridge Elementary School
3500 Ridgeway Road
Memphis TN 38115
Population: 515

Data Provided By:

greatschools

Teachers

teachers
Sherwanda Chism
teachers
Dr. Debora Gaten