Reflection
When I sit down and think about it, this course really has been useful. It takes no time to find a lesson plan or resource to use in the classroom; its just knowing where to find the information. I know that I don’t want to be that teacher that exclusively gets all my lesson plans off of edhelper.com (oh there are those and the kids are never bored-that’s some sarcasm there), but there is nothing wrong with finding ideas and supplementing your teaching with new lesson plans. That said, I will certainly continue to find resources as long as I am a teacher because I will never know everything and I will always want to enrich what I teach. It would be cool to be a teacher that posts lesson plans on a website that future teachers use. As one educator said “Good teachers borrow from other good teachers”.
I’m not sure if I’ll keep up the blog- its a good way to organize what I find, but it may be pushed aside for a bit. The useful sites were the SAS site and Smithsonian; I only hope that I get to do inclusion in cool English and Social Studies classes so I can use those resources. It is hard to find lesson plans for the OCS curriculum, but thats where teachers get creative I guess. I hope I’m one of those creative teachers.
Lesson Plan 2
http://www.teachnet.com/lesson/langarts/speaking/persuasivespeech.html
Delivering a Persuasive Speech- a good lesson plan for all types of students. The students write a 6-8 minute speech trying to convince the class to their side and as they are delivering it, the class responds based on criteria of a good speech that the teacher gives them. Often times the students I encounter do not know the reasons for opinions they may have, and this activity addresses those issues. How many times have I heard “That’s cool.” or “That’s dumb” and the reason I get for the statement is “I don’t know it just is.” When a student has to persuade others to their side, that is where the reasons come forward. For students who are shy, they have a structured way to express themselves. There is a time limit, they can read and practice the work and they know exactly how they will be assessed. I would enrich this activity even by brainstorming a whole list beforehand with the class of good topics to talk on and I would make the students plan out their speeches with some thinking maps. The possibilities are endless!
Lesson Plan 1
http://www.lessonplanspage.com/MathCIBudgetingWithPercents78.htm
This lesson plan, Budgeting with Percents suits me just fine; its a good fit for the OCS program that I’m interning with now. These students have to learn real-world skills, which can be hard to teach. It can be hard to make filling out an insurance form fun. Here the students must budget out everything from food to their job and analyze how much money goes where- on the computer.
I think that lesson plans are all about getting ideas and tweaking them yourself, so I would use this lesson plan but to make it more interesting maybe let the students pick where they want to live and what kind of lifestyle they might have but have all the research behind it. They should actually find a house in Hollywood and figure out how much it is to live there. I really liked the idea at the end of the lesson to make students create a pie chart of how they spend their time the best. I might do this next week actually.
Response Article 3 and Web Resources
This article was a great refresher- vocabulary is essential. Adults may not have vocabulary lists that they have to memorize and take tests on, but even now I have vocabulary that I come across that I have to know and apply. I think the article was helpful in that it gave ideas for cementing vocabulary in real settings with strategies that would work across the curriculum. Science teachers can use literature circles too! Its hard to make vocabulary something more than words you forget after a test- it’s important to teach them alongside literature or poetry. I liked how the science teacher taught vocabulary alongside her lesson as well as going deeper with breaking down the words and getting the Latin root words in. If the English teacher then breaks her words down, then the students will really remember the words. My only thought would be how to make students use new vocabulary in their speech. To know what it means is great but to use it is even better.
As far as the web resources, I would have to remind myself and other teachers to have plenty of examples of the activities for the students to refer back to. I’ve made that mistake many times when teaching something. It may be cool, but if it’s new and abstract, students will be confused and lost if they don’t see an example. I’ve done ABC books before and they are a great way to get technology working in the classroom. Overall, kudos to these teachers that go above and beyond.
Response Article 2
It was the thing I dreaded during my freshman year of high school; this was the research paper. Its hard to make a research paper fun; and I feel like we’ve lost the reason behind why we even write them in the first place. The thing I liked about this article was that it showed many different ways to gain the same skills you would need for a research paper, just in a less boring form. Students still have to learn documentation and research skills, they just make a want ad or a birth certificate. The presentation is different, but in the end the student ends up writing as well. The article made the point that students would often write pieces explaining their project, and this gives them just as much writing practice as any other research paper. The article makes sure to point out that grading the projects can be difficult since there might not be any standard for a good project, but that shouldn’t hold teachers back.
1) In what ways can the traditional research paper be beneficial?
2) The article mentioned that grading these projects can be hard. What could one do for a student that lacks the creativity that many of these alternate ideas require?
3) How could one de-stigmatize the ordeal of research paper writing?
Response Article 1
I’ve used “I” poems before and I always loved them. Its enough structure for students that are intimidated by writing, but it can be so freeing for students that have the ability to be creative. They are a good tool to activate prior knowledge and get ideas flowing in regards to the piece of literature. They can also be good for after a piece to look at the author’s style and techniques and mirror them. Students could even make their own poems and compare the methodology they used with the author’s.
1.) Could “I” poems be adapted to any group of students (special ed, ESL, ect)
2.) How could you enrich “I” poems even more?
3.) How could you make “I” poems more group oriented?
Reading Strategy 5- Tea Party Sarah Huff
Title your post: Reading Strategy 5- Tea Party
Your Name: Sarah Huff
Name of Strategy: Tea Party
Source (Where did this come from?): Florida Online Reading Professional Development
Link to the Strategy:
http://forpd.ucf.edu/strategies/stratTeaParty.html
Give a thorough description of the strategy and how it will be implemented. This should be a summary of the strategy according to the original source:
The teacher writes several details and quotes from the passage or reading on notecards before the students have read the story. They gather in groups and move around the room putting together these clues to come up with what they think the reading is about. Then, when they read the story they can compare their impressions to the actual text.
Explain what part of the standard course of study is addressed by this activity.
English 8th Grade
1.03 Interact in group settings by:
- responding appropriately to comments and questions.
- offering personal opinions confidently without dominating.
- giving appropriate reasons that support opinions.
- soliciting and respecting another person’s opinion.
Explain why you think this strategy will work. How does the strategy help your students learn?
Its important for students to think on their own and come up with their own predictions, and I’ve always liked group work. This activity gives the students a chance to work together and draw on their own experiences as well as justify to others why they make the inferences they do. Students often times make a statement, but have no way to back it up.
Reading Strategy 4-Read My Mind Sarah Huff
Title your post: Reading Strategy 4- Read My Mind
Your Name: Sarah Huff
Name of Strategy: Read My Mind
Source (Where did this come from?): “The How To Reading Strategies”
Link to the Strategy:
http://www.mandygregory.com/How%20To%20Reading%20Strategies.htm#Read%20My%20Mind
Give a thorough description of the strategy and how it will be implemented. This should be a summary of the strategy according to the original source:
After reading, the teacher writes down a few key words or details from the reading and tells the kids that they have to read her mind and tell her what she is thinking of in the book. For example, she might say “sparkle” and since they were reading Twilight, they would tell her about the scene where Edward the vampire sparkles.
Explain what part of the standard course of study is addressed by this activity.
English 3rd Grade
2.02 Interact with the text before, during, and after reading, listening, or viewing by:
- setting a purpose.
- previewing the text.
- making predictions.
- asking questions.
- locating information for specific purposes.
- making connections.
- using story structure and text organization to comprehend.
Explain why you think this strategy will work. How does the strategy help your students learn?
It’s fun and easy and is a good variation from the typical “what details does this story have?” and by listing certain important details, it prioritizes information for the students. The teacher shouldn’t list a tiny detail like “red shoe” to get the students to tell her that a character mentioned once has red shoes. This also would be a good activity to warm up students to a text before reading to refresh their little brains.
Reading Strategy 3- Visual Imagery Sarah Huff
Title your post: Reading Strategy 3-Visual Imagery
Your Name: Sarah Huff
Name of Strategy: Visual Imagery
Source (Where did this come from?): Just Read Now!
Link to the Strategy:
http://www.justreadnow.com/strategies/visual.htm
Give a thorough description of the strategy and how it will be implemented. This should be a summary of the strategy according to the original source:
This simple strategy is implemented when the students read aloud an imagery rich text and stop every so often to visualize parts that they have read. After finishing the reading, the students can discuss the images they experienced and see which ones were commonly shared and which ones might not be typical of the story.
Explain what part of the standard course of study is addressed by this activity.
English IV
4.03 Demonstrate the ability to read, listen to and view a variety of increasingly complex print and non-print critical texts appropriate to grade level and course literary focus, by:
- selecting, monitoring, and modifying as necessary reading strategies appropriate to readers’ purpose.
Explain why you think this strategy will work. How does the strategy help your students learn?
Though this strategy is simple, it is good because it breaks up monotonous reading and it gives all students a chance to contribute to what the author’s purpose is. Everyone has had a sensory experience at one time; if not, the teacher could provide one in the classroom. Students need to feel connection and investment in the text, as well as understand if they aren’t getting the point. If they have images that no one else has, that’s a clue to let the teacher know that the student needs some help in comprehension.
Reading Strategy 2-Anticipation Guide Sarah Huff
Title your post: Reading Strategy 2-Anticipation Guide
Your Name: Sarah Huff
Name of Strategy: Anticipation Guide
Source (Where did this come from?): Reading Strategies: Scaffolding Students’ Interactions with Texts
Link to the Strategy:
Give a thorough description of the strategy and how it will be implemented. This should be a summary of the strategy according to the original source:
This strategy involves a set of questions or ideas that a student keeps in mind while they are reading. The questions which require an “agree or disagree” from the student, include main ideas and themes or connections to the daily life of the student. A teacher may give a student one statement such as “Love conquers all”, which is a theme in the work, and it is their job to find examples of this and then back up their findings in a class discussion.
Explain what part of the standard course of study is addressed by this activity:
English 1 High School
5.02 Demonstrating increasing comprehension and ability to respond personally to texts by selecting and exploring a wide range of genres. 5.03 Demonstrate the ability to read, listen to and view a variety of increasingly complex print and non-print literacy texts appropriate to grade level and course literary focus, by:
- selecting, monitoring, and modifying as necessary reading strategies appropriate to readers’ purpose.
- identifying and analyzing text components (such as organizational structures, story elements, organizational features) and evaluating their impact on the text.
- providing textual evidence to support understanding of and reader’s response to text.
- demonstrating comprehension of main idea and supporting details.
- summarizing key events and/or points from text.
- making inferences, predicting, and drawing conclusions based on text.
- identifying and analyzing personal, social, historical or cultural influences, contexts, or biases.
- making connections between works, self and related topics.
- analyzing and evaluating the effects of author’s craft and style.
- analyzing and evaluating the connections or relationships between and among ideas, concepts, characters and/or experiences.
- identifying and analyzing elements of literary environment found in text in light of purpose, audience, and context.
This strategy can address all of these goals based on how the teacher tailors the anticipation questions and ideas. The teacher for instance, can make questions that will make the student draw from previous experience to determine the answer to the question. The questions as a whole are meant to shed light on the author’s purpose and style, with the student making these connections as they read with the question in mind. Anticipation questions can help students get the main ideas from text, as well as help them summarize the passage.
Explain why you think this strategy will work. How does the strategy help your students learn?
Especially in discussion based classes where the students talk about literature often, it is nice for students to have a theme that they can discuss well because they were able to focus on it in the reading. Oftentimes, literature has many different themes that seem hard to identify with. This way, students can learn about one theme on their own and then learn about others from other students, or just have a guide to identifying themes. I like that this strategy can be applied to any work of writing and students that can handle more complcated work can use more anticipation questions, while others may work with one. It seems like a good warm up activity or discussion starter as well.
