M5U3A2 Differentiated Lesson

Ninth graders love writing essays said no teacher ever. With that being said, ninth graders need to learn how to effectively communicate through writing to prepare them for the million papers they will write in college and also to prepare them for life after college. This week students will write explanatory essays based off a chosen essay prompt. To make the task less daunting I will break the assignment down into parts for them.

First, I will start with a presentation on writing explanatory essays. I will probably use a Prezi presentation because the movement of the slides is more entertaining than clicking through Powerpoint or Keynote slides. After they have had their presentation, I want the students to practice together identifying topic sentences and thesis with two or three sample essays. This is a Think-Pair-Share activity that will assist ELL students through partner work and analyzing English essays. The group activity will also assist my students with ADHD since they can be paired with model behavior students (Strategies for Students with ADHD, 2014).

After the Think-Pair-Share, students will be given the next part of their assignment. They will choose one of four essay prompts and will have to fill out a graphic organizer with supporting resources for their topic. Breaking the instructions down into parts will help my ADHD students keep track of their assignment (Strategies for Students with ADHD, 2014). I will orally give all instructions (Marburg, 2015) in addition to posting the graphic organizer to the online classroom will help my ADHD students and my visually impaired students. The visually impaired can manipulate the font size of their organizer. ADHD students can have a written reference of what they are suppose to be doing in case they become distracted.

While students have organized their source materials and developed their thesis statements, they can begin writing their explanatory essay. For my ELL students, I will keep a list of defined words on the board like topic sentence, thesis, formatting, and quotations. The words will also be defined on the online classroom as a reference. In addition to posting to the online classroom, I will periodically ask questions to my ELL, ADHD, and visually impaired students to check for understanding so that I may clarify for them individually. Link to my flowchart https://mm.tt/943447712?t=3i9IRpxjcq

Resource:

Malburg, S. (May 2015). Looking Through Their Eyes: Teaching Visually Impaired Students. Retrieved from http://www.brighthubeducation.com/special-ed-visual-impairments/62427-ideas-for-how-to-teach-visually-impaired-students-seeing-the-big-picture/

Strategies for Students with ADHD. (Oct 2014). Education.com. Retrieved from https://www.education.com/reference/article/add-adhd-strategies-tips/

M5U2A2: Performance and Formative Assessment

Teaching Ninth grade English is no easy feat with a generation of kids who don’t like to read and only write through social media domains or using devices that autocorrect their spelling. With that being said it is all the more important for me to not only teach a writing standard but to ensure that the students understand what was taught to them through assessment.

The standard W.02 states that the student will be able to write highly effective explanatory texts to convey information clearly through analysis of content.

A summative assessment would be for me to offer them several texts (2-3 samples) and then ask them a prompt like, “How do the works you have read accurately examine and convey cultural tradition?”. This would require the students to read and analyze the text, create a thesis, and then write an essay that informs the audience how the texts convey cultural tradition. The students will have to use text evidence to support their thesis. I will know if they are performing well if they can develop a thesis that is relevant to the prompt and if they can support their thesis with well selected facts from the text.

A formative assessment would be to give the students a graphic organizer of essay structure. I would then have them fill the graphic organizer based from text that I have provided. This allows me to see if they understand the concept of identifying topic sentences, thesis, and the topics of supporting paragraphs. Then I would have them fill a graphic organizer for their essay.

Another formative I would give during the week is a Think-Pair-Share. The partners would have an essay that they could help each other identify the thesis and the supporting facts. They would then stand and share a summary of their essay including the topic and how the evidence supported the thesis. This shows me if they can recognize how the thesis is developed and what makes supporting evidence sufficient.

Resources:

60 Formative Assessment Strategies. (n.d.). Teach-Now. Retrieved from https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzYfzjQoASL_bXVxYUg4SE1lSk0/view

Whys and Hows of Assessment. (2015). Carnegie Mellon University. Retrieved from https://www.cmu.edu/teaching/assessment/basics/formative-summative.html

Backwards Mapping Reflection

I was pretty familiar with the Arizona standards but what I like about backwards mapping is that I can design activities with specific goals in mind. Sometimes I feel like I am talking at the students with no way of knowing if they are retaining the information until it is too late. I like designing activities that engage the learner but sets a specific goal that I can monitor and adjust.

The standards can be very large and daunting. Backwards mapping breaks the standard into smaller, workable pieces. If I ask, “What is this suppose to look like?”, I can then start with smaller tasks or, at least, define a starting point. For example, I started a writing standard that has to do with revision, editing, and rewriting. Before, I may have had the students write a paper and then I would have graded it for feedback which would have taken me hours. Instead, I had them write an essay and then trade with their peers, thereby accomplishing the standard because they do the editing instead of me providing them feedback that they may not have retained. Like McTighe (2012) mentioned in his article, “Lacking the capacity to independently apply their learning, a student will neither be college nor workplace ready,” this defeats the whole purpose of my job if I impart useless knowledge.

It’s important to read the standard and understand it as well. In the first week of teaching I though I had an easy standard dealing with mood. I found all these examples of mood and felt like my students were really grasping the information. Then, when it came time for the formative, turns out the standard was on how text organization creates mood. The questions were about organization and all my students answered with mood. If I had used backwards mapping I could have focused on the verbs in the standard to create relevant objectives.

Resources:

McTighe, J. (Dec 2012). Common Core Big Idea 4: Map Backward from Intended Results. Online. Retrieved from https://www.edutopia.org/blog/common-core-map-backwards-jay-mctighe-grant-wiggins

Backwards Mapping

Starting next week at Cienega High School, the ninth graders will be working on Arizona state standard 9.W.02, which states, “The highly proficient student can write highly effective informative/explanatory texts to examine and convey complex ideas, concepts, and information clearly and accurately through the effective selection, organization, and analysis of content.” (Standards: ELA, 2016). I am choosing this standard because I have to build a lesson plan for it anyway so now I can get credit for the work and then I can implement my lesson plan with my students.

By the end of this unit the student will be able to introduce a topic, develop the topic with well-chosen, relevant, and sufficient facts, and establish and maintain a formal style and objective tone. To assess their knowledge, first I will quiz them on the requirements of an expository essay after a presentation. Then I will have them choose one of four topics and they will fill a graphic organizer with relevant and sufficient sources for their essays. I will assess their formal and objective tone by having them write an expository essay on their chosen topic.

In addition to this I would like for them to bring in a one page expository article that they found interesting and have their peers summarize and compare it in an expository essay as an activity to build examining and convey complex information. For a group activity, I will have them write a two page paper of their own faction (Divergent reference), with specific prompts as a manifesto that describes their faction’s values. This activity is for the student to practice organization of text. One last activity would be to have them site references in MLA format, which will develop their ability to effectively select supporting documentation.

Resources:

Standards: English Language Arts. (Dec 2016). Arizona Department of Education. Retrieved from https://cms.azed.gov/home/GetDocumentFile?id=585aab01aadebe12481b8455