Autumn Stevens

ELED 3226-002
Dr. Strong
29 October 2019

Entry #1

During language arts, the teacher introduced the lesson of writing paragraphs. The

objective for this lesson was for students to become comfortable with writing one paragraph at

a time which included a complete topic sentence, three supporting details and a conclusion.

The students were asked to come up with two weaknesses they had with writing or reading and

suggestions for how to work on their weaknesses from peers.

Prior to the lesson the teacher asked students to write down two weaknesses they have with

either reading or writing. Students had quiet time to reflect on their weaknesses and then

posted there sticky notes around the classroom for their peers to give them advice on how to

work on their said weaknesses. This allowed students to build off of one another as well as

noticed each students contribution to the lesson. After the students wrote down their

weaknesses and collected their advice from peers the teacher sent the students to the carpet

to start on their first paragraph to their essay. The teacher introduced the topic of the essay

and wrote on the board the format that the essay was to be written in for students to look back

on as they were starting to write their introduction paragraph. Before starting to write their

first sentence the teacher asked clarifying questions such as, “what side of the paper do we

start on? Where do we put our name and date? And where do we put our indent in our

essay?”. This let the students know the basic formatting of an essay and during the lesson she
repeated questions about punctuation and grammar to further the students thinking and to

reassure that students were remembering where to capitalize or put a period in a paragraph.

Students were asked to do a paragraph a day with the assistance of their work book which had

the sentence starts and they followed it with their own sentences of their weaknesses and

solutions to their weaknesses. When each paragraph was complete the teacher would walk

around the classroom and have the students read their paragraphs to themselves to confirm

that it sounded good.

In the future, I will plan on using the teacher collaboration, organization and critical thinking

skills to help my students create their own writing. In this lesson, the teacher gave them a topic

but made them make it more their own by including their own weaknesses as well as other

classmates feedback which I felt allowed the students to use their critical thinking skills to help

out a peer with their weakness while also being open about their own weaknesses in reading or

writing. I also felt that the teacher organized the lesson nicely by only doing one paragraph a

day. I feel as though this makes it less overwhelming for the third graders who are only used to

reading paragraphs but not writing their own.