Teacher Evaluation of the Program
School: Phillip and Sala Burton High School
Teacher: Leona Mason
School Year: 2001–2002
Overview
At Burton High School, I teach 36 9th grade students in an ethnic U.S. history course, 60 12th grade students in a community service Leadership course, and 70 10th grade students in Modern World History. All of these students benefited from my collaboration in the CAPI project. In general I found myself focused on reading and writing skills in all my classes. Even though Claudia Wilson and I specifically collaborated on the ethnic U.S. 9th grade course, I incorporated many of the skills that I learned at the workshops and while working with Claudia in all of my classes.
Do you think your students have benefited from your collaborations in the CAPI project?
For the Modern World History 10th grade class, I incorporated pre-reading activities, scaffolding for note-taking, and the use of graphs and outlines to plan for essay writing. With the essays themselves, I used peer review, and tried to implement the different styles of annotation that we had discussed for correcting papers (writing at the end of the paper as opposed to throughout, focusing on particular strengths and weaknesses, and allowing students to revise their work).
I found that my 10th grade class as a whole was far more focused in reading and writing activities than last year (my first year at Burton High School).
For the ethnic U.S. history 9th grade class, I was able to implement many of the skills that we discussed during the CAPI project. Whether it was the Saturday morning workshops, or time spent working with Claudia Wilson collaborating on lessons, I feel that this curriculum is now truly focused on literacy skills through the social studies content. I used modeling, different reading techniques, note-taking skills, brainstorming for essays with charts, scaffolding, individual review, and peer review.
I employed the “modeling” technique in my classroom and found that the students were able to grasp the assignment, the content, and they were able to comprehend the information enough to answer critical thinking questions or at least have their own opinions. Whether I was “modeling” how to take notes from a social studies content reading, how to pre-read a chapter from a book, or the first questions or task of any exercise. I found this to be helpful for myself in realizing what students need to know for an assignment, and for students for overall comprehension.
I also found that breaking up reading assignments to really teach reading, and not just the content, enhanced reading and comprehension skills. The exercise included smaller pieces of a longer reading. These were divided amongst groups of students for reading and note-taking. These groups then wrote their notes on the board so that a complete page of notes was available for students to glean information for questions that followed the reading assignment. I learned that when reading and writing becomes the goal, you may need to streamline the content information. Reading and writing skills can reinforce social studies content, but you need to spend time teaching reading and writing.
For essay writing I tried to focus on the organization of the content for the essay, the parts of the essay, the writing (both at home and in-class), and, lastly, reviewing the essay. In organizing essays, I always tried to have a graphic organizer for students to place their content information. I used graphs, Venn diagrams, and Roman numerals. This content was then used when students planned for their essays by placing the examples within the outline of an essay. Students were given specific instructions for the different parts of the essay so that they would be able to construct their own essays with their own styles, opinions, and choice of examples from content. Here again I used modeling techniques so that students could see the process and be able to have an idea of expectations.
With Claudia Wilson’s help I was able to use both in-class and at home essay assignments. We discussed the steps involved with each one and students were also preparing for the diagnostic SFSU test that we took once at the beginning of the semester and finally at the very end. All essays were graded, and I always tried to address the class as a whole to weaknesses that we needed to address. Individual students were given paragraphs at the end of their essays to help with their essay development.
The ability for students to proofread their own essays is a difficult skill, but through guiding questions throughout the year, students honed their proofreading skills not only for themselves, but in reading other student’s essays. The creation of and need for these questions came up out of the CAPI workshops and discussions with Claudia Wilson.
Which, if any, of your teaching practices have changed or been influenced by working with your SFSU collaborator? What was the most useful/valuable practice you implemented in your classroom?
I think that the most important influence on my teaching practice from the CAPI program would be the fact that I now cannot segregate reading and writing instruction from my social studies content. I realize that all these skills are crucial and that ample time should be given to the instruction of reading and writing. This time commitment does not detract from the content, but enhances the content.
What can you suggest as further methods of improving student proficiency for entering the CSU campuses?
To further improve student proficiency I think it would be wonderful to implement writing workshops and tutoring programs for students just as they have at the college level. I also loved the interaction that the students were able to have with the SFSU professors. I think this is a vital part of the program and really sets the student’s and teacher’s sights on college level work, even if they are four years away.
Did the Diagnostic Writing Service (DWS) help you or your students? Why or why not?
I also think that the Diagnostic Writing Service can be used to help students. I used this service to help introduce the idea of placement testing, in-class writing (planning, writing, proof reading), and attempted to talk about how, as freshmen (9th grade) writers, they should have low scores and many areas to improve in. This message was important and I think it was beneficial.
What other assistance or involvement would you like to have from San Francisco State University?
I hope to continue my relationship with the CAPI collaboration team in the future, and would love to hear about workshops and collaboration opportunities for the future. Thank you all for your hard work.
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