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Alaina Engdahl

Dr. Johnson

READ 4343

10 March 2020

Vex Ven

During my teach for Disciplinary Literacy, I focused on introducing the elements of

fairytales to the students, both the traditional story elements and those that make fairytales

unique. The students used turn and talks and listened to a read aloud and we filled in an anchor

chart with everything we knew about fairytales. The students then moved on to creating their

own fairytales, first by using a graphic organizer with sticky notes, and then moved on to writing

their stories with me after the lesson.

Keeping in mind my goals for the lesson, after my teach I took some notes on what I felt

like went well and what I felt like I struggled to get through, or what stumped me. I kept these

notes in my mind when I went back to watch my teach. Watching the video was less

uncomfortable than I thought it would be, and I was actually glad I got to do so. Watching

myself teach from an outside perspective was extremely helpful for me to not only identify areas

that I thought I could improve on but allowed me to see areas in which I was confident and felt

good about. Usually if you don’t have a video to reference and can only use your memory to

look back at something, the moments where you struggled or were uncomfortable are all that

sticks out. Looking back at my teach in preparation for my vex ven, I was able to see that a lot of

the time (despite how I felt) I came across as calm and confident, like when I was talking in the

beginning about fairytales, and instructing the students on their first turn and talk. I also did great

answering students’ questions, incorporating and building off of their thoughts, allowing them to
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voice their opinions, all while keeping us moving forward. I noticed this during the read aloud on

the rug, and while I was talking about who the villain is in the story.

During the vex ven, I highlighted three main areas to discuss: our discussion over who

the villain was, our anchor chart discussion when I forgot to mention theme, and the instruction

for the activity when I forgot to mention to them that their fairytale should star themselves. I got

a lot of solid feedback during the vex ven.

During the discussion about when I left out the part of the assignment where students

write their fairytale about themselves, I took away a crucial piece of helpful advice. Dr. Johnson

advised me to keep in mind the main goal of the lesson. It wasn’t a TEK that the students needed

to complete, and they were still able to write their fairytales and complete my goals for the lesson

without including themselves in the story. Once I realized my mistake, I should have slowed

down to think about whether or not it was crucial to the lesson, or if I should just leave it out to

avoid confusing the students. If I could do it again, I would have not even mentioned it. Moving

forward, I will keep this in mind and make sure that I am really considering what parts of my

lesson are essential to the goal of the lesson.

When discussing the fact that I left out the theme, I was given more helpful feedback.

The group encouraged me to incorporate this element into another part of the lesson, creating

almost an extension and giving myself room to explore theme, rather than trying to mention it at

the end when students were already working, and only half listening. In this scenario, if I applied

the same strategy as above, focusing on what is important to the goal of the lesson, this is the

best-case scenario moving forward. The theme is a major element to fairytales, and the goal of

the lesson was to understand and use the parts of fairy tales, so theme must be included. An

example we came up with was discussing theme when the students were ready to move onto
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writing their stories with me in small groups. We can use the opportunity to reflect on the story

and lessons they’ve done with Mrs. Anchondo and incorporate theme into their stories.

The discussion around the villain was one of my favorite parts of the vex ven. I

mentioned that I wished I had expanded more on why I felt the beanstalk acted as the villain. The

group mentioned that it would have been a good time to add another turn and talk to give

students the chance to take a stance on who they thought the villain was and why. I thought this

was a great idea and going forward I want to use turn and talks in this way to allow students to

take a stance on things and encourage them to be able to defend their perspective while being

open to others. Another suggestion was to make sure I’m using clear language when describing

the villain, rather than using language that makes the villain out to always be a person, and then

backtracking and confusing them. I feel like this could have been avoided by more carefully

thinking through the lesson and trying to find areas in which students may be confused or have

tough questions. However, there are always unexpected questions and discussions, and in the

event that a similar situation happened, I would take more time to pause and discuss my thought

process with the students, using meta talk and other tools such as encouraging the students to

turn and talk.

This discussion around the villain led me to thinking deeper about classroom talk. I

referred back to Engaging Students in Disciplinary Literacy, K-6, and Brock’s thoughts on

classroom talk. The importance of student’s talk is a common theme between Brock’s book as

well as Talk Read Talk Write, and with good reason. Brock states that “Classroom talk is a

critical component of disciplinary literacy because much of what we learn, we learn through

speaking and listening” (79). This is something I considered when thinking about our villain

discussion, when reflecting about the class as a whole and what I took away, as well as my idea
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of what disciplinary literacy is. I concluded that talk is so important because it is what our brain

uses to process what we are thinking and create meaning. By listening and sharing ideas, we are

able to scaffold new concepts and discuss them in our own words, solidifying their meaning as it

pertains to each of us.

Overall, during this incubator and vex ven, I was able to not only identify my strengths

and areas I can improve, I also received strong feedback and made plans to integrate these new

strategies and ideas into future teaching. Finally, it led me to making a strong connection

between classroom talk and disciplinary literacy, and the importance that discussion and talk in

the classroom holds.