Think Space for Focal Student Conversations

Think sheet A – Focal student conversation      

1. What are you thinking about right now for your area of inquiry?

I am thinking about how I should start strategy/Guided Reading groups, or some type of partner/small group shared reading with academic conversation protocols.

2. What is one thing you learned when you had a conversation with your focal student(s)?

After my interviews, I began doubting the usefulness of my students writing post-its during independent reading to track their thinking, because they didn’t seem to understand the importance or usefulness of the post-it writing process. I want them to feel held accountable for thinking during reading, and I want a way to track their thinking. I want them to feel like writing post-its (or taking notes about their thinking in some way) is useful – and I realized, that for myself, I never take notes about my reading unless it is a difficult text that I know I’m going to have to retain information from and use in a discussion later. I want my students to have that feeling of urgency, or usefulness for post-its, and so I would like to start a partner reading routine where students can discuss their books during and after reading to help make sense of whatever reading unit we are working on.

3. Did you find out what you were hoping to find out in the conversation?

I had been hoping my interviews would show that my students were using post-its all the time and truly understanding how they were helping them – however, I knew that wouldn’t necessarily be true, because I knew many students weren’t actually writing post-its during independent reading. My interviews DID show me that my students were not understanding why they were supposed to write post-its, so that was helpful.

4. What do you want to know now?

I want to start partner reading and guided academic conversations – then, I want to know if post-it writing feels more useful to my students.

5. Where are you now in thinking about a repeating or routine data source?

I think the post-its can still be a routine data source, to show me if students are focused and understanding during minilessons, and also to see if their thinking during reading changes when they know they need to discuss their reading with a partner.

I also think that individual conference notes can serve as a reliable data source as I can more deeply understand student usage of post-its.

6. What do you want help with today from your small group?

I want my group to help me with figuring out how to hold my students accountable to thinking and writing their thoughts about reading. I also want help to think about how to structure the Guided Reading groups (or small strategy groups) to be able to differentiate for each student – who needs primarily phonics instruction? Who needs more self-guided literature circle protocols? Who needs me to put post-its in specific pages of their book with a sentence frame already written to help teach them where to “stop and think”?

After group conversation:

What are you thinking now? What are your next steps for your inquiry?

I am thinking that it is going to be really important to start working with my students in strategy groups that are differentiated by reading level, ELD level, and decoding/phonics instructional needs. I also want to take grammar and ELA benchmark scores into consideration when forming these groups. I think the groups could be flexible, but I’m not sure how exactly to do that and still have a consistent structure and routine in place for me and my students. My next step will be to sort students into these groupings, create an instructional schedule, and begin instruction. I think I really need a lot of time to sit down and think about how to do this (and do it well!) and I don’t know when I’m going to have that time. I work all the time and still feel like I never finish all that needs to get done. This is going to be the hardest part for me in terms of making all of this important instruction happen! I think these groupings will help the students understand why I want them to be taking notes about their thinking and give them a useful outlet for using their post-its.