Talk with your MT about your idea, and use the information
you gained from Inquiry One to respond to the following guiding questions
listed below. Upload to Angel and blog before our Week 4 class (Oct. 2) AND post them
on your book club blog:
1. Describe your target area for guided
lead teaching.
o My target area will be to facilitate
comprehension instruction. In fifth grade, we put a lot of emphasis on reading
comprehension, so I will be reading a book aloud to them and we will complete a
packet of information about the book that relates to how they understand the
book. It will be mostly personal response, making inferences, understanding
figurative language, and choosing a theme.
2. Approximately how much time per day
is allotted for your instruction in this area?
o 60 minutes, 5 days a week. So this
lesson should take me about two weeks in the classroom.
3. Which Common Core State Standard(s)
will you work toward?
o CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.5.1 Quote accurately
from a text when explaining what the text says explicitly and when drawing
inferences from the text.
o CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.5.2 Determine a theme
of a story, drama, or poem from details in the text, including how characters
in a story or drama respond to challenges or how the speaker in a poem reflects
upon a topic; summarize the text.
o CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.5.3 Compare and
contrast two or more characters, settings, or events in a story or drama,
drawing on specific details in the text (e.g., how characters interact).
o CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.5.4 Determine the
meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including figurative
language such as metaphors and similes.
4. How will teaching in this target
area provide opportunities for students
to learn important content and/or skills that relate to their lives? In what ways does this learning include
learning literacy, learning about literacy, and/or learning through literacy?
o Not only will they be able to use
all the comprehension strategies we are working on now (rereading, text-to self
connections, etc.), but they will acquire new comprehension strategies (making
inferences, understanding figurative language, etc.).
o This target area is mostly learning
about literacy and learning through literacy. They will be using a novel that
we read aloud as a class to determine the important information and theme of
the text. We will outline the different characters as well as pull quotes from
the book to describe the character.
5. What types of classroom talk take
place within this target area? To what extent is the talk teacher-led,
student-led, or focused on higher-level thinking? What norms for interaction
would you like to build within your classroom as you teach in this target area
(e.g., see ideas in Chapter 6 of Strategies
that Work, the Berne & Clark 2008 article, or draw from some of the
readings done in TE 402 on classroom talk)?
o The type of classroom talk we want
to establish is student-led conversations. We want to show the importance of
responding to each other during a discussion. We want them to use language such
as “I agree with Billy, but I think…” or “I think Johnny has a good idea, but I
think…”
o We also want the students to think
deeper into the story. We want them to analyze what the characters are like and
what they are doing in the story.
6. Which ‘core practice’ do you want to
work on developing/improving as you teach in this target area (refer to
document “Resources for Developing Core Practices”)? How will focusing on this
core practice contribute to your own
professional learning?
o I would like to work on guided
interactive discussion and explicit instruction. The conversations during my
lesson will be mostly student based but I will have to pose certain questions
to them to get the conversation going. I would like to work on formulating good
questions that require them to think deeper about the book.
7. What resources within the community,
neighborhood, school district, school or classroom do you have to work with in
this target area?
o In our classroom, we have a book for
every student and the teacher. We also make packets for the students to jot
down their ideas about theme, characters, etc.
8. What additional resources do you
need to obtain?
o Since my mentor teacher has taught
this unit in the past and found that it really works, she has everything we
need for the lesson right in the classroom. The things we might need are more
posters to hang around the class to show the importance of all these
comprehension strategies.
9. How will you pre-assess your
students in your target area?
o My mentor teacher and I talked about
having the students write down what they think figurative language, theme, and
the other key components we are covering in our lesson are during a Making
Meaning short story. We will have them jot down their ideas during a second
reading of the story. This way we can see what they know and what they don’t know.
10. What else will you need to find out
about all students in your class to help you develop lesson plans for your
Guided Lead Teaching?
o I think it is important to give the
pretest and see what the students know and don’t know. Then I will know what I need
to spend more time covering in my lesson.
11. What else do you need/want
to learn about the ‘core practice’ to support your planning and teaching?
o I am learning through Making Meaning
what it means to have a guided discussion. I would just like to see it in
another form besides “Turn to Your Partner” and then report back to the class.
12. What concerns, if any, do you have
about planning and teaching your unit?
o Since I have only been doing Making
Meaning with my class, I have concerns about writing a plan for a different
kind of comprehension approach. It will be interesting to see how the students
respond to a new kind of instruction in the classroom.
Heather, I also want my unit to encourage more student led discussion as well as to have them performing higher level thinking. My unit focuses more on the elements of narratives, but it also encourages them to refer to things that they are reading and take interest in to be able to apply it to their own reading, which is much like you developing their comprehension skills that they can use in other areas of reading.
ReplyDeleteI am curious about the packet that you are going to be using with your students. Are you going to be using any other strategies besides the packet to reinforce the ideas within your unit?
Good question. I guess I did not make it clear in my post. Not only will the students be using the packet to describe each character, but at the end of the unit, the students will get into groups to create a new character that would fit into the story. They will have to be able to explain things about the character that would assess if they mastered the theme and overall message of the story. My mentor teacher has used this lesson every year and told me that it goes along with our leadership theme and that the students respond very well to this unit. Also, they will be doing personal response writing pieces along the way.
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