Class Scribe ( February 30 and 31)

Camila C. Studying the Vocab Words

Claudia's Story with words highlighted

First, in our Do Now, we had to write a story with the vocabulary words.

Second, we had the Lit. Circle Quiz.

The Chapters we were to read were 14 through 15.

Third, we went through the norms and went into our groups

I tracked my group.

After our discussion, we did our reflecting on learning targets.

Literature Circle Video Analysis

Post by Ms. Vallillo (acting as Official Scribe)

Learning Targets for today's class:
I can participate in high-quality, text-based discussions.
I can use relevant and specific evidence to support my claims.

Overview of the Day:

Students are analyzing their performance in literature circles by annotating a video of their last discussion.  To do this, they refer to the Literature Circle Rubric and highlight moments in the recording when one or more members of their group used evidence from the text to support their claims, asked a question that fueled discussion, or exhibited other exemplary analysis.  

Literature Circle Rubric:

Students got into their groups and used imovie to:

- Cut out "dead air"

- Check the videos followed LARK

- Identify segments of discussion

- Highlight and annotate where they did something that is part of a high-quality, text-based discussion

- Highlight and annotate where they exhibited good discussion behavior

- Add constructive criticism

Here are some things overheard:
"Do you think this is an example of using evidence from the text?"
"Should we cut this?"
"There is 21 seconds of dead air here!"
"Let's insert a transition."
"We need to cut this part out."
"That's a quotation - let's add that in."
"There is a lot about our video that is not perfect!"
"How do you take the background noise out?"

This is the checklist students used that helped guide their video analysis: 

Here is the Rubric we will use to self-reflect and evaluate our Video Analysis:

Students will continue this work in our next few classes and follow up with a blog post in which they embed the video.

Literature Circle Discussion Preparation and Recording

Guest post by Mrs. Tolisano (acting Official Scribe)
 
Learning Target for Today's Class:

• I can participate in high-quality, text-based literature circle discussions
• I can support my claim with relevant and specific evidence

Students are preparing for their literature circles by going over the chapter read and writing their questions down on a sticky note

Literature Circle Protocol

1. Read Norms
2. Transition
3. Clarifying Questions
4. Deep Discussion
5. Transition
6. Debrief/Reflection         
7. Shareout

Each student wrote down a goal for today's literature circle. Ex. Keep people on topic more often

The class went over the previously agreed upon  Norms

• Come prepared
• share the flow
• you can read ahead, but don't talk ahead
• stay on topic
• follow protocol
• be respectful
• discussion centers
• be responsible for everyone's knowledge

Everyone got into their literature circles groups and prepared a camera to film the group. The purpose of the recording is to have evidence of their discussion skills and literary analysis of a text.

Students used the rubric below to rate their participation in the group.

Students got into their literature circle groups and got to work.

Here are some things that were overheard:

•  "I have a deep discussion questions. What made me think of it was..." (showing evidence of claim)
• "I think it is on page 1 ... " (showing evidence of claim)
• "What if  he could..." (fuel discussion, look at different points of view)
• "But how can he see the future without bamboo?" ( fuel discussion)
• "Guys, we have to focus". (responsible for learning of all)
• "What else? Do you have anything?" (Inclusion)
• "In the book, it said...right?....yes, the there is also evidence earlier in the book...." (looking or evidence in book)
• "I have a counter argument..." (listening to others and fueling discussion)
• "This is off topic" (Owning your learning, staying on task)
• "I still don't understand why they left him? It is still confusing..." (asking further questions)

Back in class, students debriefed by writing a blog post about their take away and learning of today's discussion questions. Take a look at the right side bar of our blog which links to both 6th Grade Humanities student blogs.

The class ended with each group uploading their video to Ms. Vallillo's computer to be ready to annotate the video for evidence of literary analysis during the circle time. Stay tuned to a future blog post about the video annotation.