Introduction

As a team, we have been traveling to the Central Elementary School of Lexington, VA, to observe and help teach a class of 5th graders that learn there: Ms. Cosgriff’s classroom of bright minds. We immediately were met with the colors and shapes her classroom offered, dusting off the dusty and old faucet of a child’s imagination in our minds. As you walk in, you see the kids’ individual lockers and then a sink with cabinets for arts and craft supplies. There is even a bearded dragon that the kids learn to take care of. In the center, there are desks and wheeled chairs that are always in a new arrangement every time we enter the class. They tend to, however, face the front of the class where Mrs. Cosgriff’s desk is with a projector for lessons. In the corner, there is also a colorful rug with bean bags for the kids to sit in during group or individual work. Scattered around the room are books, educational posters, and posters and crafts created by the students. The atmosphere of the class is one that encourages creativity, imagination, and learning. The culture of the class is also conducive for these elements. Mrs. Cosgriff, since the students are so young, has a directive authority over the class. However, she focuses on interaction with the students and every lesson involves interaction with her and the other students, hands on activities, and fun and colorful visuals. The students are respectful, but love to participate and are eager to learn. Mrs. Cosgriff also ensures there is a lot of emphasis on scaffolding for improvement. For example, the students had a short, interactive lesson on onomatopoeia. Then, they had a crossword puzzle where they read and found onomatopoeias in a Christmas song, found the words in the puzzle, then used those words to crack a code. Those that solved it got to put another ornament sticker on their paper Christmas tree. Every day, they had a new lesson with a new puzzle. This created a fun environment where the students were excited to learn. 

Mrs. Cosgriff also focuses most of her lessons around Project Based Learning principles that we have been learning in class. When we first visited the class, the students were working on a group project with The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Kate DiCamillo. The students then presented their projects to Briana, Justin, and I and had a short discussion of the book with us. Then, the rest of our time in the class, the students began a research project on immigration to the United States. One group talked about sports and the countries they originated from. Other groups, however, covered heavier topics, such as the Underground Railroad as a form of internal immigration. The students were then tasked with creating a Podcast with satire, sound effects, and commercials to display and present their research. For civic engagement, Mrs. Cosgriff also had one of the groups working with a podcast creator for the Washington Nationals. He has been working with the kids to create their podcast and will be in the final recording. As we visited the class, we helped students with their research, create their storyboards, and listened to practice runs of their podcasts. For our Teach-in visit, Briana, Justin, Noah, and I created a lesson around this project on how to record a podcast. By using EL principles that we learned and were displayed by Mrs. Cosgriff, we decided to also incorporate a mock podcast within the lesson to help the students visualize what we were talking about and make the lesson interesting for the students. It was then great to see the kids be receptive and take advice from our lesson and apply it. On our last visit, when we helped the kids with their practice runs through the podcast, the students had a written script, sound effects ready on a separate computer, had done several practices, and spoke confidently. From our visits, it was great to see the PBL and EL principles we were learning applied in a classroom environment.  

Educational Research

Rachel’s Research:

For Blog 4, we were tasked with finding a scholarly article about Expeditionary and Project-based Learning, in theory and in practice:

For Blog 4, I chose to read “Instructional Scaffolding: Reading and Writing as Natural Language Activities” by Arthur N. Applebee and Judith A. Langer. This journal explains how to build up young readers and writers in a way that furthers their critical thinking and skills as readers and writers. Applebee and Langer explain how when we are young and learning to speak, adults slowly ask questions to improve a child’s vocabulary and language to help them communicate. For example, they will fill in words a child missed or point out objects and say its name to aid the child in communicating fully. This is based on an adult helping a child “complete a task” in order for them to eventually do it on their own. They are working to expand and recast a child’s efforts without fully correcting. Eventually, this is internalized by the child and they can carry on full conversations on their own. However, this practice of continually “building up” is lost when a child goes to school. The focus is on recall and memorization of lesson material, rather than understanding and learning of concepts and general knowledge. For example, children are asked to complete fill-in-the-blank worksheets to recall science terms, vocabulary, etc. The lessons and materials are not structured in a way for children to internalize skills and knowledge that they can eventually use without external support. These methods simply teaches children to recall specific information from a test. Lessons instead should be focused on being intentional, appropriate, structured, collaborative, and eventually internalized. For teachers to move away from a traditional, simply structured lesson, they must scaffold their lessons to build off previous knowledge and teach them skills to further their comprehension. Lessons based on this idea can be very simple in nature. They can include tasks such as, “prereading or prewriting activities, ‘guides’ to structure comprehension or writing, and discussion or revision sessions to expand upon and develop students’ initial work. This however, depends on the subject that is being taught. For example, if the students are conducting an experiment in science, instead of filling out a worksheet, they can answer questions that ask why something is occurring, what the procedure for the experiment is, describe what the reaction is, and explain the components of the experiment and why they were included. These are not simple memorization questions, but instead focus on broad comprehension and understanding of the experiment taking place. Then, to build on these skills, the students can learn how to turn that information into a properly formatted lab report. For language arts, this can look like a structured class discussion, such as a Lit Circle. These can be driven by a topic question or sentence that begins conversation. Then, asking students to explore themes, comparisons between other novels, the broader take aways of the novel, how it can be applied to their lives, etc. To summarize, scaffolding should aim at building upon skills and knowledge of students to acquire new skills and further comprehension and critical thinking skills. Then students are given an opportunity to express this knowledge and learn from their peers in a learning community. Rather than simple memorizing specific facts for a test.

For Field Journal 7, we watched a video in which a high school conducted a mock election following the presidental election. Then, we analyzed an essay in Actual Minds by Jerome Bruner and how those philosophies are displayed in the video:

In the very beginning of the film, you see a student practicing for her first speech as Hillary Clinton. The teacher advises them on instructions for the assignment and then breaks them into small groups. There, the student runs through her speech as others in the group give advice and critiques for how to improve. This is an example of mathetic, heuristic function. The student practicing her speech gains information and correction from others. The student is also able to engage with other students to find out things and possibilities about her speech. This is opposed to a pragmatic function where the student is simply being told by the teacher what to do. Another example of mathetic language is how both candidates use an imaginative function. They are both trying to build a world that the other students can imagine for the future so they can choose the best candidate. One example of this is when the student playing Hillary Clinton is reviewing her notes for questions on how she is going to defeat ISIS. She is very clear about the different ways she is going to do this. She is trying to get the others to imagine a world with her in power and a dismantled ISIS by telling them what she will do and allowing the audience to imagine it.

I think this immersive learning journey has a lot of benefits. It allows students to use mathetic and pragmatic languauge to help one another and be persuasive. It also gets students involved in current politics and informs them of issues faced in our nation today. Then, allows them to construct their own personal views as they are exploring this.

Bri’s Research:

My Blog 4 encompasses the many lofty ideas of literature and learning.

“Behind the Story Map” is a teaching philosophy article that details the vast world of literature and how studying these worlds can give children valuable perspectives on the real world. This entire idea is something my partner, Rachel, and I have been exploring with our Think Alouds and Lit Inquiries; how can we relate the story world of fiction to real life situations and what does this teach us? According to the writers of “Story Map,” “stories help us understand the social world in new ways” (Douglass, et al, 91). Rachel and I couldn’t agree more as we chose a story with themes of family and friendship to hopefully give our students meaningful lessons on learning and life. We purposefully chose “The Lonely Heart of Maybelle Lane” by Kate O’Shaughnessy, a book with difficult themes of family acceptance and love, so that we may approach these difficult subjects in such a way that our students will be able to express their thoughts and emotions thoughtfully. As said on page 92 of “Story Map,” literature teaches kids “how to navigate through difficult emotions” (Douglass, et al). This philosophy directly influences the style of teaching and the kinds of lessons that Rachel and I plan to incorporate.

Sometimes, emotions can be hard to communicate and talk about. This is why introducing a creative vessel, like literature, to carry these topics in might be a better course of action than creating a lesson randomly asking students how they feel. The magic of stories can help children think about themselves in a more creative and productive manner. Literature not only allows students to think about themselves, but it gives them an opportunity to think abouts others; literature lessons provide a way for students to understand perspectives and to experience empathy. Page 94 of “Story Map” says this well, with “reading instruction should consider both cognitive skills and emotions to build motivation” (Douglass, et al).  There is an entire world of learning within the pages of literature that await the study of students as there is much to learn through the experiences of others, even if those experiences are fictitious. 

The philosophy behind “Story Map” is one that I personally take to heart. I resonate with the concept that literature has something valuable to teach to students, no matter the grade level. With applying these philosophies to my lesson planning, my partner and I chose to focus on the importance of emphasizing and relating to the text to better help the students navigate their way through their own lives.

Works Cited

Douglass, April, et al. “Beyond the Story Map: Inferential Comprehension via Character Perspective.” The Reading Teacher, vol. 69, no. 1, 2015, pp. 91–101., https://doi.org/10.1002/trtr.1377.

Thank you Mrs. Cosgriff and MAJ Hodde!