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Rebekah McCloy

Dr. Megan Marshall and Professor Ian Nolte

ENG 402

7 December 2020

Clinical Experience Unit Reflection

My ten-day unit on literacy narratives went fairly well, though I did end up having to

make alterations to the plan on a few occasions. This was due both to picture day occurring in

the middle of my unit (students were taken out of English class for senior pictures), and to the

students not having done the necessary work on their days at home. The latter was an issue that

my supervising teacher seemed to have with the students as well.

Initially, students enjoyed reading and watching the different literacy narratives that are

available on the Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives, but then, partway through the class

period, students began having an issue where their devices would not allow them to access the

website. Both the teacher and myself tried to fix the issue, but to no avail. Luckily, the teacher’s

computer had no issues with the website, so I was able to print of example narratives for the

students to use when they completed their reading log entries (day 1). With Cohort A, I was able

to print off literacy narratives that were related to subjects the students were interested in, as I

had asked the students for a couple suggestions. Cohort B came into class on Thursday having

not done any of the work that they were supposed to have done during the first half of the week,

so we ended up doing an altered version of the original reading log assignment. Unfortunately,

this was one activity that couldn’t really wait, as it was their main experiential introduction to

what literacy narratives are. I could not follow through with the original plans of having a
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writing day because the students had nothing to go off of. Therefore, I printed off two of the

narratives that I had previously used with Cohort A, passed them out to the students, and had the

students do a five-minute write on each piece. While the students in Cohort A did initially enjoy

surfing through the different narratives, the technical issues ended up making the reading log

assignment a little less fun for the students.

My students also seemed to really enjoy the days where they were actually working on

and writing their literacy narratives. Once students figured out what exactly a literacy narrative

is, they really seemed to get into the writing process. It seemed as if, for most of the students,

their words came together pretty quickly. I had a few students who were, at first, a little confused

about what exactly they could put into their literacy narratives. There was one girl who had a

considerable amount of trouble figuring out what part of her literacy story she should focus on,

until she found out that she could include her problems with dyslexia. As with the others, once

she figured out what she could focus on, she did a great job of putting her words together.

Additionally, my students seemed to really enjoy any time that they got to spend

discussing their ideas with their classmates. They loved the think-pair-share exercises, though I

did have to give a few reminders that they could not pull their mask down to talk when in these

groups. The majority of the time, students would not pull their masks down to talk. They did

really well with class discussions and one-on-one discussions with me, but for some reason,

when partnered up for a socially distanced masks-on talk, they felt it was alright for them to pull

masks down. Luckily, it did not end up being a major issue. The acquiesced when I asked them

to keep their masks pulled up. That said, the think-pair-share activities went really well. Given

that they do not get quite as much time to communicate one-on-one with their classmates

anymore, it was a big hit.

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I think that my best teaching day throughout my ten-day lesson plan would be day six.

This is the day that I covered the revision process and had students doing their self-assessments.

We had just read The Revision Toolbox by Georgia Heard a few weeks prior in ENG 402, so I

felt that I was in a good position to go over the revision process with my students. It was

something that was very fresh in my mind. Additionally, while students were doing their self-

assessments, I did have a chance to go around and check in with students to see how they were

doing with their literacy narratives. I enjoyed having the opportunity to further discuss the

students’ essays with them one-on-one. This particular class day seemed to go fairly smoothly,

so that certainly adds to its appeal as I reflect upon it.

In retrospect, there are a couple things that I would change about my lesson plan. First, I

would definitely take the time to come up with a good contingency plan for when students come

in having not done the work they were supposed to have completed on their five days (three

school days) at home. I think that would have made things a lot less complicated at the time.

However, I do still cherish the initial experiences, as I definitely was able to learn how to alter

the plan at a moment’s notice. It was a lesson on adaptability. Second, I would change the way in

which I did peer reviews. Though it seemed simple on paper, it ended up being pretty

complicated with the cohort that was not in class. I would change my peer review assignments to

where the students had to post their essays to a discussion board on Schoology by a certain time.

I would assign each student two people whose essays they had to peer review with the document

of peer review questions that came from Heard. The students would read through the essays they

were assigned, answer the peer review questions thoroughly, and return their feedback by

posting it below the initial post of each of their assigned partners. I feel that doing the peer
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review assignments as a discussion board would be a far more organized way to accomplish the

assignment.