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THE CONTEXT IN WHICH MY TEACHING TOOK PLACE Beach
Elementary School is located in an affluent town with minimal ethnic
diversity. The school receives a lot of financial support from the
community and parent associations. As a result, they have comprehensive
resource programs which focus on speech and language, English language
development, reading support, and overall learning and development.
Careful attention is payed to assessing students and providing them
with the necessary extra support in improving their academic abilities.
Overall, the students at Beach have scored well on standardized tests,
resulting in a ten out of ten API ranking. The students in Carl's
classroom also did well on the STAR test at the end of third grade,
with the high majority of the class receiving proficient and advanced
scores. In researching for this project specifically, I found that only
six percent of the student body are English language learners, and
there are no ELLs in Carl's class. In fact, the overall oral language
proficieny of the students in Carl's class is high because students
participate in conversations and dialogues every day in the classroom,
requiring them to use academic English. Carl
is not an English language learner. His native language is English, and
he neither speaks nor understands any other language. Although he is of
Chinese descent, his parents were both born in the US and neither of
them speak "Chinese" (Carl did not know whether it is Mandarin or
Cantonese that is spoken in his extended family, if at all). Upon
entering Beach Elementary School for the third grade, Carl was assessed
and placed in the reading resource program, as well as the speech and
language resource program. He continues to receive this extra support
now in fourth grade. His report cards and standardized tests have
consistently shown overall strengths in math and average performance in
language arts, with weaknesses in reading comprehension. Carl was
chosen for this assignment because his oral and written academic
English is still developing. Overall, in both writing and speaking,
Carl can answer questions appropriately, stay on task, and support his
claims with evidence. However, his descriptive language and vocabulary
usage is still developing, as are his articulation and enunciation
abilities when speaking. While Carl reads and writes at a basic fourth
grade level, he still uses short and simple sentences, and there is
room for improvement in expanding his ideas and demonstrating a more
in-depth understanding of what he is reading and writing.
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CURRICULUM PLANS OVERVIEW GOALS a. short term begin
to learn how to use the P.L.A.N. strategy for reading textbooks to:
predict the content of a textbook before reading it; identify how much
they know about the concepts before reading; add new information while
reading text to hel explain unknown concepts and confirm/extend known
concepts; and note new understandings after reading through oral
responsesbe able to think about newly learned information and verbalize that to groupb. long term be able to use an appropriate strategy when reading from a textbook, such as the P.L.A.N. strategybecome
comfotable with making predictions about non-fiction test, drawing on
prior knowledge, confirming predicitons when reading text, and
evaluating newly learned informationdevelop their Academic English when talking about concepts from textbooks, rather than conversational Englishc. standards use appropriate strategies when reading for different purposesmake
and confirm predictions about text by using prior knowledge and ideas
presented in the text itself, including illustrations, titles, topic
sentences, important words, and foreshadowing cluesevaluate new information and hypotheses by testing them against known information and ideasoral???PROCEDURES This lesson will be taught to a small group of five students at a time. 1. anticipatory set: ask
volunteers to share their feelings about reading from textbooks, do
they read differently than if they were reading a SQUIRT book, why or
why not, is it easier or more difficult, why... 2. guided practice: tell them about the PLAN strategy (predict, locate, add, note) and how this can be helpfulmodel each stage for them by going through the stages together using one example from the text:a.
predict: together come up with one prediction of what the chapter is
going to be about, reviewing strategies such as looking at subtitles,
words in bold, and pictures; have them write it on their graphic
organizers b.
locate: together "locate" in our minds how much we know about this
topic, reviewing the scale of 0-not at all, to 3-a lot; have them mark
it on their organizers c. add: read the section regarding this prediction together and add notes to our organizers of things we're learning d.
note: model how I might tell someone what I learned using phrases such
as, "Something new I learned from this chapter is..." and, "Something
interesting I learned from this chapter is", and, "Something I already
knew but learned more about is..." * while doing all of this, I will write on chart paper the strategy, and what each step involves. 3. independent practice: have them finish filling out their graphic organizers, going through each of the stages againfor
the last stage, each person will share one thing they predicted, how
much they knew about it, and something they learned or confiremd with
the group, while the rest of the group listens and either either checks
these things off if they have them on their organizers, or adds them to
their organizers if not (if it fits, in a column, if not, in the extra
space); during this time, I will assess their abilities to think about
the steps and evaluate what was learned, as well as their Academic
English use.4.
closure: ask for volunteers to share how the PLAN strategy went for
them; was it helpful, why or why not? Will they use it again, and if
so, for what? (Here I hope to guide them in making connections to other
parts of their lives, and when they can use this strategy outside or
reading the science textbook.) RATIONALE I
have chosen to focus on reading comprehension, specifically of a piece
from one of their textbooks, because much of their social studies and
science curriculum is based around their textbooks. I want them to have
strategies they can use when reading from their textbooks to help them
better understand and retain the information. The P.L.A.N. strategy is
specifically designed for readers who are experiencing difficulty with
comprehension and retention of informational text. It calls for readers
to make predictions, draw on background knowledge, explicity think
about what is known/unknown and read to answer these questions,
therefore making the reading more personal, confirm or deny
predictions, and evaluate their learning. I have added an oral
component so students can develop their oral language skills when
talking about content areas and information found in textbooks. Because
the children have never used this strategy before, I will be guiding
them through the process as we go through each step. I will pick a
relatively simple text for this introductory lesson on using the
P.L.A.N. strategy so we can focus more on the strategy rather than the
text. In the anticipatory set and closing pieces of the lesson, I will
ask them to think metacognitively about using the strategy to give the
process more meaning.
Copy of the P.L.A.N. graphic organizer
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A RECORD OF MY TEACHING I
taught the lesson mentioned above to five students, one of whom was
Carl. Before teaching the lesson, I assessed the students by giving
them each a P.L.A.N. graphic organizer, briefly reviewing the steps,
and then asked them to complete it for a chapter they had not yet read
in their science textbook. A few days later, I taught the lesson. It
went just as planned, starting with a brief conversation regarding
their thoughts about reading from textbooks. As suspected, they all
agreed that reading their independent reading books is more fun, and
reading from textbooks is more challenging. I reviewed each step of the
P.L.A.N. strategy with them, and informed that using this stratgey
might help them organize, understand, and remember what they read. We
then filled out one of the columns on the graphic organizer together
for a new science chapter on extinction, while I modeled how to go
through each step and provided them with some strategies. Then they
finished reading the chapter and filling out their own graphic
organizers individually. During this time, I checked in with the
students to make sure they understood the directions, and were filling
out the organizers correctly; that is, I wanted to make sure they knew
what information went in what spaces. For some children, including
Carl, I reminded them of some of the stategies we had discussed
earlier, such as looking for highlighted words and main ideas, and not
writing down too many examples. When they finished, each student shared
one thing with the group. I modeled how to do this, making sure I was
using Academic English, by starting with one prediction I made about
the content of the chapter, how much I thought I knew about this
concept, and one thing I learned about it. While one child shared with
the group, the others were to look on their papers and either mark off
information they already had, or add new information they did not have
to their organizers. While the children shared, I reminded them to make
sure what they were saying made sense, to use complete sentences, and
to speak loudly. After the sharing, I asked the children what they
thought of this strategy and whether or not it was helpful. Each
student agreed that it was very helpful, mostly for understanding and
remembering. They also agreed that they would use this strategy again
when reading from their science and social studies textbooks. Student
work revealed that each of the five students were fairly successful in
applying what they had learned and using the P.L.A.N. strategy for the
rest of the chapter.
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AN ASSESSMENT OF MY STUDENTS' LEARNING AND OF MY OWN TEACHING Carl's Learning Prior
to teaching this lesson, I had the five students, including Carl, fill
out a P.L.A.N. graphic organizer to assess more specifically what they
were already able to do according to my learning goals and standards. I
compared these organizers to the ones completed during this lesson to
see what they had learned. I used the following questions as a
guideline to complete this assessment: Did
they make accurate predictions about the content of the chapter? What
were their predictions based on (pictures, bold words, subtitles)?Did
they add relevant information for each prediction, either to confirm or
clarify concepts? That is, did what they wrote match the prediction?Did they add main ideas, rather than all examples? Where did they get their notes from (words in bold, topic sentences, etc.)?During
their sharing with the group, did they display the ability to think
about and verbalize each of the steps (predicting, locating, adding,
and noting)? Did what they said make sense?Did
they use Academic English, rather than conversational English, when
sharing with the group? Did they use terms from the text, did they use
a lot of utterances, did they use complete sentences, did they read
what they wrote directly or use their own words, were they comfortable
talking about the text? I also used my conversations with them about textbook reading, both prior to and after teaching them the lesson. In
comparing Carl's first graphic organizer to the final one used as an
assessment, I am able to make the following statements regarding his
learning: He has improved in making more accurate predictions about the content of a non-fiction text (from a textbook).He is more consistent with the source of his predictions, and the relevance to the chapter.Although
he is able to discern relelvant and clarifying information from the
text and write it down, he still needs work on writing down more; his
organizer shows that he only wrote down one or two statements for each,
and I needed to support him in finding more important information
(things he didn't know, but I guess he didn't think were important to
note).He is able to discern main ideas from text, but still needs improvement here.With some modeling, he is able to think about his learning and share learned information with the group.With
some guidance and distinct modeling, he is able to use academic English
to talk about concepts from a non-fiction text; he used complete
sentences, few utterances, terms from the text, but had minimal
expansion, and read basically what he had written down.He is able to think metacognitively about his learning, and recognize that this strategy can help him remember things he reads.In
comparing these results to what Carl was able to do before the lesson,
based on the pre-assessment, it is clear that the lesson was valuable
for him in improving his ability to organize what he reads while he is
reading it, access prior knowledge, discern main ideas and relevant
information, think about what he has learned, and reflect
metacognitively on his learning. In addition, this lesson was valuable
in that it provided Carl with an opportunity to use academic English
appropriately when talking about the text. My Teaching In reflecting on my own teaching of this lesson, I feel that, overall, it was successful for three reasons: 1)
The goal for this lesson was relevant and developmentally appropriate
for these students. I believe that teaching the students a strategy to
use when reading from textbooks was extremely necessary for them, and
that was evident during our discussions on their feelings about
textbooks, during the lesson with their enthusiasm and eagerness to
learn the strategy, and after the lesson during our discussion about
whether or not the strategy was helpful and they would use it again. In
addition, they were all able to access and understand what I was asking
them to do, some, including Carl, with a little scaffolding. This
includes the metacognitive thinking I asked of them when thinking about
their own learning. 2)
Teaching to a small groups was extremely valuable for these children
and their learning. With a class of 28, I am concerned about issues of
equity, and some of the students, including Carl, are "slipping through
the cracks" during whole group instruction. While Carl does receive a
lot of outside support, within the classroom, he often fades away in
group discussions. Perhaps he felt more safe to participate in the
small group, but I also was able to check in with him more often, and
require that each student share. With 28 children, it is difficult to
do that. 3)
Including different types of activities (discussions, modeling,
independent work) was effective in keeping the children engaged and
interested. The instruction I planned gave the students the opportunity
to engage in conversations, access their prior knowledge, learn from my
modeling and give their own feedback, do independent work to try out
the strategy for themselves, and engage in more conversations, both
about the text and metacognitively about their learning. What
was problematic about this lesson was that I did not have enough time
to focus on the "add" piece of the strategy, which seemed to be the
most challenging, especially for Carl. Because we only used one text,
I'm not sure how much they really learned about discerning main ideas
and clarifying information to write down in their organizers.
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WHAT DID I LEARN ABOUT INCLUDING ACADEMIC LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT IN MY TEACHING Based
on how things went during this lesson, I would next provide these
students with the opportunity to use this strategy again, for a
different chapter in their textbook. I would also teach one lesson
specifically on the "add" stage, and ask them to discern main ideas and
supporting details from a variety of non-fiction texts. I might plan a
partner/jigsaw group lesson, where pairs of students would have to read
a text and pull out main ideas with some examples, and then share that
with the rest of their group (who haven't read that piece, but perhaps
similar ones). Then they would make a posterboard of everything that
group learned. Specifically regarding academic language development, I
would perhaps include a writing piece for the "note" stage, asking them
to evaluate their learning through something written. If
I were to teach this same lesson to the same students again, I might
break it up into two lessons, with one focusing only on the first two
steps, and the other focusing on the last two steps. This would allow
for more time to model and practice the "add" step and recognizing
clarifying information and main ideas. Throughout
this whole process, I have learned how valuable it is to keep academic
language development in mind, and how easy it is for teachers to forget
to incorporate it into their teaching. Especially in fourth grade, when
the jump from learning to read to reading to learn
happens, these children need to have opportunities to read, write, and
talk about concepts that are "academic". Therefore, they need to be
provided with the tools to do this. When planning curriculum for this
age group, as for other age groups as well, there should be a piece of
the content that reflects academic language; when planning instruction,
room needs to be made for academic language development activities.
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