Video

Week #1 Performance (Beginning)

 

Week #3 Performance (Developing); Round #3

 

Week #5 Performance (Self-Sufficient)

 

Reflection

My juniors are my most heterogeneous group this year, with over half the class designated as English language learners (including three L1s and one L2). Additionally, I have a number of special education students and a couple students who have 504 plans. On top of that, I have a range of thinkers, from students who are taking the class for a second time (because of a failing grade the previous year) all the way up to several students who will take AP English next year.

With all of the challenges, though, we succeeded collectively and student to student. I saw an increase in class participation this unit of more than 50% more comments and 70% more students speaking in class.

Students on IEPs and others who had a reputation of being shy in class conversations stepped up. Two students who notoriously sat at the back of the room without saying anything all year both got to play roles on our weekly performances. One also became a videographer. All in all, my students were able to get involved in class in different ways this unit and this allowed them to shine. Since my goals were primarily based in increasing participation levels to build better class discussion, I see the success when I look at my tracking of class participation. There were a few students whose voices I did not hear this unit, and so I will look for ways to get them more involved, too. Even these students, though, took part in smaller group conversation. Not a single student missed out on contributing this unit.

The area I would like to improve most on from the get-go is supporting my ELLs. They wrote in reflections that they understood Streetcar better based on my support during the latter parts of the unit, which included having them partake in visualizations of the play and also the Spanish summaries I gave to them. I was able to figure out ways to support ELLs in the final few weeks, though it took trying out a number of ideas to see what worked best. Moving forward, I feel as though I have a bigger toolbox to use to support ELLs as well as I do others.

During this unit, a concurrent area of focus was SAT preparation for the juniors, as designated by the junior team of teachers. This was not in my original CUP, though the team had asked for it to be a focus in all four core classes this spring. Students showed significant improvements in their writing this unit, which in my opinion was their biggest area of weakness as a class. After building up students through practice and writing workshops, I saw improvement in paragraph structure and development, and in citing specific examples from a text both with and without the text available. For example, several students whom had never referred to a textual passage this year in an essay mentioned symbolic meanings of colors in Blanche’s various outfits over the course of the text. They were able to analyze the changes from white to blue to red.

One challenge in learning this unit has been timing. Claremont had a number of class interruptions on Wednesdays these past six weeks, including two junior field trips, an assembly, and a half day. I was not able to always have students conduct the depth of assignments each week that I had hoped, as I also knew I had to keep a good pace of reading for students to hold interest. Students really stuck with the reading, which was primarily done in class. They enjoyed the acting portions and improved on reading and acting day to day and week to week. During our final two weeks (we read the final five scenes during this time), students were completely self-sufficient in picking parts, directing the “stage,” and putting on performances. They grew exponentially not only in reading comprehension but also important skills such as leadership and internal motivating.

I would like to have seen different students volunteer to read parts each week, though when I teach this unit next I will consider keeping a casting chart in place to allow students to try out different roles. I want to push them to read for the same and different characters in order to get new experiences and be pushed out of their comfort zones.

The Streetcar unit demonstrated my best planning of the year for any unit, which is exciting considering it is my last unit of the MAT practicum and thus very much shows my development. Still, though, I have changes that I would make. I would better scaffold the persuasive writing for role auditions week to week, having students complete these earlier in the week. I would have liked to have given students deeper feedback on these writings, but I often felt rushed to get the roles out because we did this later each week than anticipated.

Some students were able to really get into class conversation with insightful commentary, while others joined for the first time with relatively superficial commentary. I am pleased that so many new voices were added to the conversations this unit, though now for the next unit my goal will be to push student thinking even more. I will continue to use my catchphrase, “SAY MORE,” and help students hone their speaking and listening skills.

Though these have been talked about in earlier sections the two biggest areas of growth I can see for the next time I teach this unit are ELL support and student accountability development.

For my ELLs, as written above, I want to give them more tools for success right from the beginning of the unit. I would like to provide them additional Spanish-language resources, including more detailed summaries and time to work with my during other school (or afterschool) hours to figure out what is going on in the text. Moreover, I would put them in small groups during some of the in-class activities I could pair similarly-leveled language students together to figure out what the text is saying.

For student accountability, I would have liked to have held students in certain roles during performances (including the props person and backstage director) to higher standards. I feel as though some students did not take these roles seriously and instead of bringing a prop, for example, they simply came without a prop and accepted that I would give them at least half credit for talking to me about it. Moving forward, I will ensure that all roles have a writing component where students have to justify an artistic choice. This would keep them more engaged and hopefully give them a better sense of accountability to themselves, to me, and to their fellow performers.