TUTORING DIARY

Name: Jennifer Fulton

Thursday, July 10 Scaffolding students thinking

During the ACT session with the sophomores, Jess and I were able to
use sentence framing and creating a checklist as scaffolding strategies. The
students were provided with strategies to answer the questions during the
modeling, coaching, and fading parts of the process and were able to create
a checklist of those strategies in their packet to aid them in future test
preparation. We also used sentence framing to ask questions to help the
students reach a deeper level of understanding. Most of our lesson plan
framework was based on modeling, coaching, and fading through our
scaffolding.
We were only able to review the questions with the sophomores. With
the seniors, since our time was so limited, we were able to do introductions
and talk about their learning and motivation in school, but we did not have
enough time to begin going over the questions. Each of the three seniors has
a different first choice college or university and each wishes to follow a
different career path. Hearing about their favorite classes and why that class
is their favorite was extremely interesting to me. We also asked if they had
any advice for us as future science teachers. Additionally, I feel as though I
learned a great deal from the scaffolding and strategizing that Jess and I
were able to complete with the sophomores.
We began by asking the students what they thought skimming
meant. Using the definition they crafted looking at the text, not really
reading and catching key words, which are usually the words you dont
know we helped them skim through the first section of questions. These
were the questions they had previously seen on their practice test. Then we
had them identify key words during the modeling portion of the ACT prep. To
begin the section of our lesson on choosing key words, we informed the
students that there are no right or wrong answers, just whatever jumps out
as important. The phrasing I used here was intended to allow the students
to feel comfortable and confident in volunteering answers. In their
identification of key words for the first set of questions, the students
identified values, separation, calculated, faster, and farther as the
most important words. With some prompting, they were able to explain why
they thought these words were important and how they thought those words

would be important in answering the questions. Jess further explained that

key words could be contained in table headings.
During the coaching portion of scaffolding, the students were more
easily able to identify the key words. The coaching part of the lesson
included a longer discussion of why key words were important, more
questions asked of the students, and less prompting for us. All of these
occurring simultaneously meant more learning for them through practicing
the concepts we had just learned and reviewed. We were able to include all
students in the discussion using practices learned in TE 891, specifically
orchestrating productive and inclusive scientific discussion. Each student
contributed equally to the discussion and all were able to ask questions they
had throughout the tutoring session.
The most effective form of scaffolding we used, in my opinion, was
sentence framing. We used different words to probe their understanding of
the text provided as well as the questions. We asked questions to gauge
whether or not they truly grasped the main ideas, variables, and key words
of the questions. Jess and I worked well together, switching off almost every
minute or so and building off of each others wording to help the students
learn the strategies. I am looking forward to working with the students again
the next two weeks with the next two sets of questions.

Thursday, July 17 Revisiting scaffolding

For this lesson, Jess and I took a different approach out of necessity.
Since she had to leave halfway through the session to go to the conference
in Chicago with the rest of the Woodrow Wilson fellows, she walked the
sophomore students through the modeling section of the Research Summary
ACT questions. I then took over with the coaching and fading portions of the
lesson for the remaining sets of questions. I elaborated on some of Jesss
points in the modeling section, mostly for clarification purposes and alerting
her when a student was confused so that we could work through the
question together for greater understanding. For example, when discussing
variables, the students were able to define a variable as something that
changes but struggled slightly when asked to differentiate between an
independent variable and a dependent variable. When questioned further,
the students were able to explain that an independent variable is something
the scientist or experimenter changes on purpose at the beginning of the
experiment and that the dependent variable is something that changes
because of what happens during the experiment. It did take some

prompting to arrive at these answers, but the students seemed to be more

eager to answer the actual ACT questions after arriving at these answers.
Before beginning the coaching part of the ACT tutoring, I told the
students Feel free to just stop me whenever you have questions. I dont
want to confuse you more; Im trying to make it easier on you, so I dont
want you to be afraid to stop me and say you dont understand or Im going
too fast. Okay? The intent of this statement was to allow the students to
feel comfortable in stopping me from continuing to talk if they were unsure
or confused about a particular aspect of the experiment or a particular
question. I believe this had the desired effect, as the students did stop me
with questions when something was unclear. During the coaching section, I
used elaboration and further explanation as much as possible to clarify. The
students and I worked through the three experimental design summaries
together. They identified the independent variable in each concentration
for Exp. 1, temperature for Exp. 2, and copper sulfate or catalyst for
Exp. 3 then summarized the results for each. In Experiment 1, the
concentrations of Solutions A and B varied and sometimes distilled water was
present but sometimes not. The overall volume stayed the same and the
reaction times changed in each trial. In Experiment 2, The temperature
went up by 10 degrees in each trial. The concentrations stayed the same and
there wasnt any catalyst. The reaction times decreased with the higher
temperatures. In Experiment 3, There was a catalyst. The average time
was 19 seconds. Although unable to articulate why or how the catalyst
changed the reaction time without any scaffolding, the student was able to
recognize that the presence of the catalyst was important on her own. Once I
questioned her further and gauged her understanding of the importance of
the catalysts presence, she was able to recall that we had seen the word
catalyst in the introductory text before the experimental summaries. This
type of recall, I emphasized, would be important for her (and the other
students) ability to take the test on their own and do well. She seemed to
then recognize the significance of the highlighting of key words and smiled at
me when she explained that the catalyst affected the reaction time! I was so
proud. We continued on to answer the questions together, but the students
did not need much help, scaffolding or otherwise, from me. They got most of
the answers correct, but more importantly, they were then able to articulate
why the correct answer was correct. Once again, I felt each student
participated equally. Since there were only three students and there were
three experiments, I was able to ask each student to answer at least once for
each set of data or each experiment. This was an effective use of

orchestrating productive and inclusive scientific discussion and was also

used last week.
During the fading portion, the students asked some questions but were
mostly able to identify the variables and trends in the graphs independently.
They ran into a little trouble with question 4, the question dealing with
Indianapolis, Indiana. As one of the students pointed out, It seems confusing
because you cant see Indianapolis on here anywhere! However, once I
explained that we needed to use the information within the question to find
similar cities and discover what range of answers would make sense using
similar cities data, she exclaimed Oh! That makes sense! But why didnt
they just say that? We all laughed and the students worked through how to
find the correct answer together. With some continued coaching, they were
able to understand where to find the answer and what the correct answer
was, as a group and individually, with minimal help from me. By the close of
the session, they seemed to be more confident in their ability to summarize
passages, identify not only key words but independent and dependent
variables as well, and answer questions on their own.
The students were able to use most of the same strategies that we had
taught them the week before, such as eliminating obviously wrong answers
and highlighting key words. The most effective form of scaffolding this week
was again sentence framing. The use of key words and questioning to probe
students understanding of the research and different experiments was
instrumental in their success in understanding the passages and answering
the questions.
This session differed from the first in a few key ways, but it was also
very similar in terms of consistency in lesson planning and strategies used in
answering questions. During this session, I could sense a level of trust and
comfort between the students, Jess, and myself that was not tangibly there
during the first session. The students seemed happy to see us returning and
were more comfortable in stating what they did not know and wanted to
know during all sections of the lesson: modeling, coaching, and fading.
Although the question sets differed, the students were familiar with the
techniques used so they were receptive to the lessons. The scaffolding
techniques we used were similar, because the techniques had worked during
the first session, and the students could sense the level of consistency
between the two sessions. The students seem to be looking forward to the
final session of ACT tutoring with Jess and me!

Thursday, July 24 Understanding students

We taught three sophomores for the duration of the three ACT tutoring
sessions. They all possess different strengths, funds of knowledge, and
interests outside of school that influence their performance and motivation
within school. The strategies that we taught them through the three sessions
of ACT tutoring were valuable for them in thinking about how to take the ACT
but also in how to take future multiple choice and standardized tests.
Arielle participated in the Upward Bound program to make herself
better, both in and out of school. Her favorite subject is English because she
very much enjoys writing. She did not seem as confident as the other two in
exactly what she wanted to major in but knows for a fact that she will attend
college after high school. She is excited to see what the future will bring and
has a strong fund of knowledge to bring with her to college. She is good at
synthesizing and incorporating past experiences into current assignments
and schoolwork. This skill will serve her well in future assignments in high
school and in college. Arielle is extremely outgoing and was always willing to
volunteer an answer, even if she was not completely sure of its correctness.
Autumn took part in the Upward Bound program because she wants to
go to college and she believed that the best way to achieve that was to be in
Upward Bound. She enjoys mathematics more than any other subject in
school, although she also enjoys science. She wants to become a basketball
player and knows she must achieve high grades in order to accomplish that
dream. Her main ambition in school is to stand out playing basketball and to
hopefully play for Michigan State, but to also achieve those good grades to
continue being able to play basketball at the collegiate level. She is engaged
in school but is more interested in school getting her where she needs and
wants to be in her life. She is the only one of the three who is starting to see
the larger picture of schools place and importance in life. Autumn is good at
eliminating wrong answers before choosing the correct one; this mostly
comes from her previous schooling experiences, but I hope a little bit of this
ability came from our three sessions specifically as it relates to the ACT. Her
level of perception was high in reading comprehension.
Aida is in the Upward Bound program for the same two reasons as
above; like Arielle, she wants to become a better student, and like Autumn,
she believes that the best way to get into college is to take part in the
Upward Bound program. Her ambition is to become a translator in world
languages, especially French. Her family speaks French at home so she
possesses a strong background in the language and is currently taking other

language classes at her school. She was especially talented at reading

comprehension and able to pick out key words and important concepts
quickly.
This experience was valuable to me because working one-on-one with
students with such different interests and skill sets is something that I may
not have much exposure to in a classroom setting. When you have thirty to
fifty students in a classroom each hour, five hours a day, sometimes
switching up whole classes each semester, it becomes much harder to build
such a strong personal relationship with your students in the way that I feel I
did with these Upward Bound students. I learned that while academic
excellence is something that you should strive for in your classroom, building
a relationship of trust and a culture of respect within your classroom is
equally important. No real learning can occur when trust and respect are not
present. The opportunity to work with the Upward Bound students was truly
wonderful!