Writing Experience: Reflection Of A Student Teaching Experience

During my student teaching experience, I had the opportunity to teach a 3 week long narrative writing unit. The students were to write about an important event or incident that happened in their life. Over the course of the 3 weeks, the students worked through the writing process as well as learned skills that would help them with their writing in the future. The purpose of this paper is to discuss and reflect on teaching the narrative unit, what went well about the unit, what did not go as well, and how the course has impacted by development and growth as a student and teacher of writing. There were a host of things that went well during the writing unit. First, students were able to benefit from mini-lessons on grammar usage, sentence structure,

The students needed additional time mastering prior concepts, so I wanted to make sure that I could actually complete the unit but with high achievement. Also, I needed to find time to not only go over, teach, and model the writing process; but, I needed to also teach grammar, punctuation, spelling, transitional words/time shifts, and so on. Teaching all of these concepts in a 3-week period was very difficult. I had hoped that the students would have time to really absorb these concepts, but a 50 minute class period just did not allow for such a goal. To add, all of the concepts mentioned are very fundamental in writing a personal narrative. Finally, students were at different levels throughout the writing process which required the unit to be abundant in differentiation and modified

After my cooperating teaching told me exactly what he wanted me to teach, to use, and to consider, I was ready to plan the unit. The Sunday before the first Monday of the 3-week writing unit, I finished the whole unit and was ready to teach! For the students who were ahead of the class, I allowed them to gather in a group and move ahead to the next step of the writing process. For those who were a little behind, I had the student who were ahead help them on their narratives. Also, I arranged them in a group close to the board so that I could re-teach concepts that they did not understand or answer questions that they may have had. Every day, I created a PowerPoint for each mini lesson. I took ten minutes out of each period to go over the topics. Students were actively engaged and ready to include what was learned into their writings. Every day, I tried to give the student at least 15 minutes to work quietly on their assignments. I realized that some students do not have a home environment that is conducive to