Thick Desription...1

It’s 12:30, forty minutes until specials. This time of the afternoon is always a little hectic. Students have had lunch and are a bit squirrely. The past interactive writing lessons have gone well but I kept thinking they could be better. I read in a study done with a group of students, the teacher gave each student a white board to write independently, waiting to be called up to share their wriitng with the whole class, (Craig, S., 2006).This time, I called one student at a time to come to the carpet and get an individual white board, marker, and eraser. The look on their faces was full of excitement. They didn’t expect this for their interactive writing time. I looked around and saw all five tables with their heads down waiting for their name to be called. Students one by one got their board and sat quietly waiting for directions. I saw a girl in the front look back at another student and smile. They were very intrigued. Two students took their pen and started drawing on their white board, I had to take them away and have them sit at their seats with notebook paper and a pencil. One of the boys started to cry. The other couldn’t care less; he was spinning around in his chair. As the lesson progressed most students were writing on their board using the techniques we had talked about. One student in particular was forgetting his spaces, I was able to go to him and have him fix from that point on—it got a lot better. When time was up and it was specials time, one student refused to stop writing until she got done, I let her finish up while the rest of us lined up (pictured below). Overall very successful!

 

 

Craig, S. (2006). The effects of an adapted interactive writing intervention on kindergarten children's phonological awareness, spelling, and early reading development: A contextualized approach to instruction. Journal of Educaional Psychology, 98 (4).