Making Meaning® Online Course

Reflection and Implementation Activity Notebook

The Making Meaning Online Course contains the following reflection and implementation activities that will broaden and deepen your understanding of the Making Meaning program. The amount of time needed to complete these activities will depend on which activities you choose and how much you decide to write.
Space is provided after each activity for you to enter your notes and reflections.

Introduction

Reflection

  • What is challenging about helping students learn to read with comprehension?
  • What is challenging about building a safe classroom community where all students work together and share their thinking freely?

Add your notes here.

Lesson Observation

  • What do you notice about the students’ thinking and behaviors?
  • What do you notice about the teachers’ actions?

Add your notes here.

Reflection and Program Questions

Revisit your reflections from the beginning of this module. What did you notice about the instruction and lesson features in the Making Meaning program that will help you address your challenges with

  • helping students learn to read with comprehension?
  • building a safe classroom community where all students work together and share their thinking freely?

Add your notes here.

Implementation Activity: Prepare to Teach Unit 1

Read the Introduction of your Teacher’s Manual. Consider how you will do the following:

  1. Prepare the classroom (arrange the classroom and plan for random partner selection)
  2. Prepare materials (gather student materials and set up your IDR library)
  3. Prepare for instruction (review the unit and week overviews, review the daily lesson focuses for Unit 1, read the trade books for the unit, and watch the professional leavening media from the unit)

Make notes that will support your instruction as you plan.

Time estimate: 2–4 hours

Add your notes here.

Understanding Program Structure and Planning Instruction

Reflection

  • When planning, how do you make decisions about pacing a lesson?
  • What do you consider when deciding where to spend the bulk of your time in a lesson?
  • What additional information about the Making Meaning program would be helpful to you as you plan for upcoming instruction?

Add your notes here.

Planning Considerations

  • How was your thinking and planning about pacing similar to or different from this teacher’s?
  • What, if anything, might you consider as you continue planning for future lessons?

Add your notes here.

Reflection and Program Questions

Revisitthe reflection questions from the beginning of the module. Find your responses to these questions in your notebook:

  • When planning, how do you make decisions about pacing a lesson?
  • What do you consider when deciding where to spend the bulk of your time in a lesson?
  • What additional information about the Making Meaning program would be helpful as you plan for upcoming instruction?

As you consider your experiences with the module, answer the following questions:

  • What thinking might you incorporate into your decision-making and pacing daily lessons?
  • What do you still need to do to prepare to teach your next unit of instruction?
  • What questions do you still have about the Making Meaning program?

Add your notes here.

Implementation Activity: Plan for Upcoming Instruction

Activity 1: Plan for Your Upcoming Lessons

Using the considerations discussed in this module, plan for the remaining weeks of instruction in your current or upcoming unit.

  • Review the Unit and Week Overviews to gain a sense of the goals of instruction.
  • Preview each week of instruction. Think about the types of daily lessons and consider how the levels of teacher support and student independence will shift across the week.
  • Review the Class Assessment Notes and consider the intended outcome for each week of instruction.
  • In your Teacher’s Manual, mark where students will work toward daily lesson goals.
  • Pace each step of the lesson with the goals and your students in mind.
  • Considering allotted time for the lesson, identify the number of minutes you might spend on each step in the lesson.
  • Read and consider the length of the text.
  • Identify which questions to ask.
  • Carefully review and consider how parts of the lesson will be facilitated.
  • Prepare the trade books and any other materials that you will need for these lessons.

Time: 2–6 hours. The length of time will vary depending on the length of the upcoming unit.

Add your notes here.

Activity 2: Select from the Supplemental Activities Available in Your Next Unit

View the Optional Activities professional development media.

  • Review the supplemental activities in your upcoming unit of instruction and identify which activities you would like to include in your teaching.
  • Find the activities and plan for them using the same planning considerations that you experienced in this module.
  • Consider when you will teach these activities (open days of the week during time for reading instruction, at another time of the day, etc.).

Time: 1–2 hours. The length of time will vary depending on optional activities given for the unit.

Add your notes here.

Lesson Facilitation

Reflection

  • What do you notice about your students’ thinking and behavior as you facilitate Making Meaning lessons?
  • What do you do during Making Meaning lessons to encourage students’ engagement and participation in discussions?

Add your notes here.

Reflection

  • What questions do you still have about the facilitation techniques that you’ve seen and heard about in this module? Record your thoughts in your notebook.

Add your notes here.

Reflection

Revisit the reflection questions from the beginning of the module. Find your responses to these questions in your notebook.

  • What do you notice about your students’ thinking and behavior as you facilitate Making Meaning lessons?
  • What do you do during Making Meaning lessons to encourage students’ engagement and participation in discussions?

Considering your experiences with this module, answer the following questions:

  • Which facilitation technique will you try in your instruction tomorrow?
  • How do you think your students will respond to the facilitation technique?

Add your notes here.

Implementation Activity: Facilitation Practice

Activity 1: Facilitation Practice for Self-reflection

Try Out a Facilitation Technique in Your Instruction

Select at least one of the facilitation techniques mentioned in this module to practice during your instruction. If possible, record yourself and your students as you teach the lesson. As you review the lesson and reflect, capture notes about how your students responded to the facilitation technique that you used.

Consider the following as you reflect on the lesson facilitation:

  • Ratio of teacher talk/student talk
  • Use of wait-time
  • Observations of partner conversations
  • How do students decide who talks first?
  • Do they share the time evenly?
  • Do they extend their conversations?
  • Observations of class discussion
  • Do students offer different ideas?
  • Do students offer evidence from the text to support their claims?
  • Do students use discussion prompts to extend their thinking?
  • Do students confirm one another’s thinking?

What are the implications of your observations on future instruction?

Add your notes here.

Activity 2: Facilitation Practice for Team-reflection

Observe Lessons with Colleagues

Select at least one of the facilitation techniques mentioned in this module to practice during your instruction. If possible, record yourself and your students as you teach the lesson. As you and your colleagues review the lesson and reflect, capture notes about how your students responded to the facilitation technique that you used.

Consider the following as you reflect on the lesson facilitation:

  • Ratio of teacher talk/student talk
  • Use of wait-time
  • Observations of partner conversations
  • How do students decide who talks first?
  • Do they share the time evenly?
  • Do they extend their conversations?
  • Observations of class discussion
  • Do students turn to look at the speaker?
  • Do students connect to one another’s thinking?
  • Do students offer different ideas?
  • Do students offer evidence from the text to support their claims?
  • Do students use discussion prompts to extend their thinking?
  • Do students confirm one another’s thinking?

Add your notes here.

Individualized Daily Reading

Reflection

  • What does independent reading look and sound like in your classroom?

Add your notes here.

Reflection

Consider your response to the reflection question asked at the beginning of the module. How is what you described different from or similar to the IDR strand in Making Meaning?

  • If you are teaching IDR, in what ways do you think your students are benefiting from it? What might you do in the coming days to strengthen your implementation of IDR?
  • If you are not teaching IDR, in what ways do you think your students would benefit from it? How might you incorporate IDR into your daily reading instruction?

Jot your thinking down in your notebook.

Add your notes here.

Implementation Activity: Preparing for IDR Conferences

Review your upcoming week of instruction, paying particular attention to the IDR strand of each daily lesson. In your Assessment Resource Book, find the “Resource Sheet for IDR Conferences” and “IDR Conference Note” record sheet for your current unit of instruction.

Consider the following as you plan for upcoming IDR conferences with your students:

  1. Which students will you hold conferences with this week?
  2. Which questions will you ask from the “Resource Sheet for IDR Conferences”?
  3. How might each student struggle? How will you intervene if they do?
  4. What book recommendations might you make to students who are ready for more challenging texts?
  5. What types of anecdotal notes will you plan to make on your “IDR Conference Note” record sheet?
  6. Will you record your notes on a printed version of the “IDR Conference Note” record sheet or by using the ClassView assessment app?

Add your notes here.

Vocabulary Acquisition and Use

Reflection

  • What is challenging about teaching vocabulary and strategies for word-learning?

Add your notes here.

Lesson Observation

Watch the vocabulary lesson clip.

  • What do you notice about how students are encouraged to engage with and use the words?

Add your notes here.

Reflection

  • What might you do tomorrow to implement instruction from the Vocabulary Teaching Guide in order to best meet the needs of the students in your class?

Add your notes here.

Implementation Activity: Prepare to Use the Vocabulary Teaching Guide

  1. Review the Introduction of your Vocabulary Teaching Guide.
  2. Find and read the week of vocabulary instruction that you will teach next. Consider:
  • When will you schedule the vocabulary instruction across your week of reading instruction?
  • How will you prepare your book for vocabulary instruction?
  • Identify the pages and/or excerpts that are referenced in the lesson.
  • How might you use digital resources during your lesson?
  • Will you use whiteboard activities to display prompts, word cards (K–6), and/or picture cards (K–1)?
  • How will you teach the Ongoing Review activities (if you are planning for a week later than Week 1) and when will you teach them?
  • Which More Strategy Practice, Extension, or More ELL Support Activities would you like to teach? How and when might you teach these?

Make notes that will support your instruction as you plan.

Add your notes here.

Assessment

Reflection

  • How do you use reading comprehension and vocabulary assessments to inform your instructional decisions and track your students’ progress?

Add your notes here.

Reflection

Revisit the reflection questions from the beginning of the module.

  • How will the assessments in the Making Meaning program support you with making instructional decisions?
  • How will they help you track student progress?

Add your notes here.

Implementation Activity: Using Making Meaning Assessments

Activity 1: Setting Up the CCC ClassView Assessment App

View the “Using the CCC ClassView App” tutorial on the CCC Learning Hub. After viewing this tutorial, create a class for your students in CCC ClassView.

If you have any questions, you can always get help by visiting support.collaborativeclassroom.org or by e-mailing CCC at .

Add your notes here.

Activity 2: Grading Conversations with Grade-level Teams (Grades K–6)

The rubrics in the Individual Comprehension Assessment give you a starting point for assessing your students’ reading comprehension. However, you will need to think about how you will use the information from this assessment in conjunction with your district’s particular grading system. Talk with your grade-level team about how you might use the information from the rubric(s) to assign grades to your students’ reading comprehension.

You might discuss questions like the following:

  • Will students’ comprehension grades be separate from other reading grades?
  • What should each portion of the rubric be worth? Are there certain descriptors in this rubric that are more important to you than others? (If so, you could count that score twice.)
  • Will you give equal weight to the Part A and Part B of the Individual Comprehension Assessment?

Consider the samples and assessment rubrics provided in your Assessment Resource Book. As a team, compare how you would score the sample activities and IDR Conference Notes compared to how they are scored on the sample rubrics.

Note that the examples of scored student writing and commentaries are intended to be used as tools for learning how to evaluate student work and information gathered during IDR conferences in order to complete the rubrics. By no means do you need to conform to the scores shown on the record sheets. Use your professional judgment.

Share your reflections and read what other teachers have to say on our forum.

Add your notes here.

Activity 3: Work with Grade-level Teams to Review Part B of the Individual Comprehension Assessment

  1. Gather 3–5 completed “IDR Conference Notes Record” sheets from your class. Make copies for each of your grade–level colleagues. (If you are unable to work with your entire grade-levelteam, consider doing this activity with one or two of your grade-level colleagues.)
  1. Meet as a team, and exchange copies of the completed “IDR Conference Notes Record” sheets with your colleagues so that you each have record sheets for students from each class. Use the information recorded in the record sheets to complete the rubric from Part B of the Individual Comprehension Assessment for the unit from which the conferences were conducted.
  1. After you have completed the rubric for Part B: IDR Assessment for each student, return the pieces of writing to the teacher to whom they belong. The review the scores assigned to each of your students. Identify 1–2 record sheets where there is a significant or interesting discrepancy in the scoring. Be prepared to bring the record sheets when you meet to complete Step 4.
  1. Schedule another time to meet as a grade-level team. Use the Part B rubric that each team member identified in Step 3 to discuss the following questions:
  • What score did you assign to each descriptor?
  • What evidence did you use from the “IDR Conference Notes Record” sheet to determine the score?
  • What does the discrepancy in the scores tell you about how each team member views the rubric descriptors?

The purpose of this discussion is to help members of your team gain perspective from one another about how each rubric descriptor can be demonstrated through your students’ discussions during IDR conferences, and come to a common understanding of what to look for as you make evaluations during Part B of the Individual Comprehension Assessment. Discussions such as this one will help you and your colleagues further develop your expertise and knowledge of reading instruction.

  1. Share your reflections and read what other teachers have to say on our forum.

Add your notes here.

Reading Assessment Preparation Guide

Reflection

  • What instructional supports would be helpful to you as you prepare your students for Common Core State Standards (CCSS)–based end-of-year assessments?

Add your notes here.

Reflection

Revisit the reflection questions from the beginning of the module.

  • What instructional supports from the Reading Assessment Preparation Guide will be most helpful for your students as they prepare for CCSS-based end-of-year assessments?

Add your notes here.

Implementation Activity: Team Planning