Folluo Wallwisher Project

Wallwisher Project- Deanna Folluo
Background

¨The planning of my reading lessons start with the particular skill I want/need to teach. I plan minilessons that will illustrate and model the skill such as read alouds, PowerPoint presentations, flipcharts, and websites. Then, I implement guided reading groups to practice the skill with my students. Through these conferences and practice sessions, I am able to observe and take anecdotal records of assessment. I end the week with some sort of formative assessment which is usually multiple choice and similar to a Tungsten or MAP question.

¨This week my focus was on the skill of finding the main idea in fiction stories. I used a Promethean flipchart, read aloud, and poetry to illustrate finding the main idea in my minilessons. Guided reading groups consisted of discussion of main idea and thinking about it while reading. The students were asked to read a passage, think about the main idea of the passage, and answer some multiple choice questions. The end of week assessment was not my typical multiple choice assessment (since I practiced answering those types of questions in the guided reading portion). Instead, I chose to have the students apply what they had learned to their own reading. All of the students are reading fiction stories for their independent books, so I had them practice finding the main idea of that.

Wallwisher

Project

¨I created a Wallwisher wall and asked my students to post the main idea of their story to it. The main idea could be for the entire book, a chapter, or a paragraph. I asked that the students include the title of the book as well so that others can see it and get ideas of books to read. I also wanted to use this as an opportunity to see if my students are capitalizing titles like they should. For security purposes, I set my wall so that I had to approve the posts before the students could see them.

¨I used the Google Shortener and posted the link to my website so that students could access the site at home, and I used the QR code for students to use if they chose in the classroom.

Reflection

¨The Wallwisher wall was very easy to create.

¨The kids really enjoyed posting to it.

¨I liked having the option to approve the posts so that the kids wouldn’t see anything inappropriate or silly.

¨I was surprised that many students used the shortened url over the QR code.

¨I was able to assess whether the students were getting the concept of main idea or not as I approved the posts.

¨The kids enjoyed looking at the wall when it was finished.

¨The only negative was that the students couldn’t “hang it up” or put it anywhere for everyone else to see.