Observing the Responding

Today I decided to try something different… Previously, due to time constraints, I have always given each of the 4 participants their RRJ immediately following the guided reading group meeting.  The participants completed them at their classroom seat (while I was meeting with another group) and placed them on my desk after finishing.  This is the best option because I am not able to leave my students for 10 minutes every day to sit and observe the students writing at one time.  Today I thought it would be worth a shot to do a detailed observation of all the students writing in their journals to see if it gave me any insight.  The conclusion I came to… WOW!  Why hadn’t I done this before?  For this particular post I am going to focus on only one student who I will refer to as Green.

At 9:47 I passed out the RRJ to the four participants.  The students were sitting in the middle area of the complex at an assistant’s kidney table.  All four 2^nd grade classes(103 students)  were transitioning from their Reading classes to Specials, therefore the noise level and amount of movement around the four students was very loud and distracting.  Upon handing the RRJ to Green, she immediately sat there staring off into space with her head resting on her fisted hand.  It looked as though she was in deep thought.  At 9:50, Green asked, “Can we write about something we are reading at home instead of the reading group book?”  I responded, “Of course.  Write about whatever comes to mind.”  She seemed happy to hear this, but began looking around at the chaos and gave a huffing and puffing sound.  It appeared she was very frustrated and was having difficulty gathering her thoughts due to the distractions around her.  At 9:52 Green wrote the title of the book at the top of her page.  She looked around at me and the other three students at the table to see what was on their paper.  At 9:53, all 2^nd grade classes were out of the classroom.  Only the three students, myself, and the assistant were left in the complex.  Green went to town writing and did not look up again until 10:06 when she said she had finished.  Green wrote an impressive full page and additional four lines on the back.  Her RRJ focus was on the genre of the book and an explanation of why she thought this was the case.  This was by far the most detailed, thorough response thus far.  It is what I have been hoping would eventually happen all along.  Here is what she responded:

(By the way... thanks Liz for explaining how to upload pictures correctly.  I think my school computer was just being difficult because it is easy to do at home = ))

 

 

This same pattern occurred with 2 of the other students.  Why, today?  I cannot come to any sure conclusions quite yet, but I am going to make some assumptions and see if they hold to be true as the research continues.  1) I was sitting at the table watching the participants. 2) The participants were all writing at the same time, therefore, they were able to see how much the others were writing.  They did not want to be the only ones to write a tiny amount.  3) Previously, students were writing in the RRJs quickly, just to get them completed, so they could get back to the other activities for Reading Workshop rotations.  4) Once other 2^nd graders were out of the complex, there were no distractions.