Struggling

So what does it look like when a student is struggling with a certain type of poem? Ms. Leom walks around as students write and monitors student progress. She redirects and offers strategies and suggestions to support student success.

Sometimes students need or want more help. Ms. Leom will pull or students may choose to join her to work in a small group. Her table is surrounded, students are encouraged to help each other, and they are carefully monitored to make sure they are on track themselves.

When we were writing Creature Alliteration poems, Ms. Leom suggested students use a dictionary to help find alliterating (words that repeat the same beginning sound) words. Sometimes that is overwhelming and too much information for students. So she would make a list of Adjectives (describing words), Verbs (action words), and Nouns to help students access ideas quickly.

Students had ninety minutes to write two creature alliteration poems. The time was split over two days. In addition, students had a half hour to "catch up" on their poetry notebooks. 

Ms. Leom is also conferencing (meeting) with students and helping with spelling corrections (by writing the correct spellings on sticky notes for students to fix) and giving reminders for poetry pages formating: type of poem, title, byline, and more.

 

Students have many opportunities to be successful, and we are actively trying to limit the struggling within class using a variety of strategies and active support.