Observational Form

Focus Practice: Eliciting and Interpreting Student Thinking Look Fors:

Choose 1-3 Look Look Fors

Fors for selected
focus practice

The teacher chooses a high cognitive demand task

The teacher asks questions that require students to share or justify their thinking

The teacher gives students time to think and respond using a content-specific language

The teacher poses follow-up questions to clarify, probe, or extend thinking based on student
responses

The teacher provides multiple opportunities, modalities (oral, written, etc.), and formats
(whole group, small group, one-on-one) to share their thinking
X

Observational Notes: (Describe the lesson; write specific quotes from teachers/students)

 This lesson was based on the standard CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.3.3.B Use dialogue and descriptions of actions,
thoughts, feelings to develop experiences and events or show the response of characters to situations.
 My clinical educator began by asking students “What is dialogue?” Turn and Talk with a partner to discuss
your answer then we will share with the class.
- S: Dialogue is the marks around words when people talk
- S: Dialogue is used to state something during a conversation between people in your story
- S: Dialogue can be what you are thinking and want to tell the reader
 We need to add punctuation. What are those marks called?
- S: Quotation marks or speaker marks
 Students gave great definitions of what dialogue means and together they made an anchor chart with the
defined definition as…
- When a character in a story is talking. It begins and ends with quotation marks. Uses an action verb to
introduce. Ex.) Ms. Hill said, “Let’s get ready for lunch.”
 We have been working on our narratives by editing them and adding details. Today I want you to add details
by adding dialogue to your story. Today you are going to edit with a partner around the room and identify
where you can add dialogue to your narratives. If you have added dialogue then you can call Ms. Hill or I over
to conference and help you edit to get ready to publish.
  During this time I met with 4 students about editing their narrative…
- Student A: This student wrote a story, The Big Soccer Match, and we conferenced about adding
dialogue/revision.
- Student B: This student wrote a story, Go Karting, and we conferenced about revision to get ready to
publish.
- Student C: This student was in the process of writing a story, Sleepover at Grandma’s, and we
conferenced about how to identify the audience and how to use dialogue to add details to our story.
- Student D: This student wrote a story, The Time I Broke a Table, and we conferenced about adding a
descriptive and dramatic ending to her story.

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 Students worked with partners for 20 minutes and added details to their narratives. As students were walking
around my clinical educator assisted students with generating ideas of how to add dialogue to their narrative.
There is not much time to teach writing so the teacher is not able to summarize the big idea of the lesson.

Reflection
- I completed my writing conferences after my clinical educator gave a mini lesson on how to add dialogue
to your narrative. Students were in various stages of the writing process, but it was week two of work on
their narratives so most were beginning to revise and publish. I helped student A add dialogue and revise
their final piece of work in order to publish. I helped student B with revision and publishing their
narrative. I helped student C with picking a topic and choosing an audience. I helped student D by adding
descriptive details in order to have a powerful ending. It was difficult to confer with students because
they do not use the structure we have been using learning in class. Students only have conferences during
the publishing and revision stage of their writing. There is very limited time for writing in the classroom
and it often is crammed in right before students are about to leave school. This made it difficult to
maintain students focus and conference with them about their writing. I did like the practice of conferring
with students and listening to their original pieces of work. The most important thing I learned when
conferring is to give students wait time. Students have to reflect on their own writing and it can be hard to
respond right away. Give students a moment to think and analyze their work. I often had trouble fitting a
conference into a 5 minute time frame because of the wait time. As I’m reflecting I think I tried too focus
on to many ideas rather than focusing on a sole point. In the future, this is something I want to improve
on.