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/
Cristal Cassel 