Carla Wellborn TIE 535 11/9/12 Dr. Hansen TPA Task 1: Instruction Commentary 1.

In the instruction seen in the clip(s), describe strategies you used to engage students in learning tasks to develop skills and strategies to comprehend or compose text. a. Cite examples of strategies aimed at engaging all your students and examples aimed at engaging specific individuals or subgroups. If you described any of these fully in the lesson plans or the planning commentary, just reference the relevant description. In the taped lesson I was conducting a mini-lesson on supporting details and how they relate to the main idea. The purpose of the lesson is to have a mini lecture on a reading strategy or skill that they need know and then to release them for practice. The practice portion of the lesson takes up much more time and requires them to collaborate with their fellow classmates in order to apply the information they just learned. During the mini lesson that I have chosen to present, I have students utilize the Think-Pair-Share technique often in order to keep them engaged in the learning process. If at any point I think the energy has gone down or I want them to struggle through an issue on their own, I send them to talk to their partners in order to solve with their peers. I also have them write what they think it means to support something at the beginning of the lesson to activate their prior knowledge. b. How did these strategies reflect students academic or language development, social/emotional development, or cultural and lived experiences? Honestly, most of my students have very high cognitive ability, but low attention spans and low reading skills. Therefore, I have been working closely with my mentor to increase their exposure to reading strategies and concepts. This lesson is just one of many lessons that teaches them about what to look for in a text when reading. The TPS strategy is necessary because most of the students are not used to sitting still listening to content for long periods of time. They are also fairly unfamiliar with the majority of the material we present to them. Having them discuss with their partners keeps them engaged because they are able to express their own thoughts on the subject. 2. Cite examples of language supports seen in the clip(s) to help your students understand that content and/or participate in literacy discourse central to the lesson.

a. How did these strategies reflect students varying language proficiencies and promote their language development? I really do try and lecture to the students as little as possible because the main goal is to develop them as critical thinkers and effective readers. I also know that they need to be interacting with the information as much as possible in order to really understand the information being presented to them. The Think-Pair-Share strategy allows for students to practice having academic and intellectual conversations with one another. This develops their ability to code-switch between how they speak with their friends and how they speak in school or with adults. We, as adults in the classroom, model how this conversation should look through our lectures, but the majority of the class is devoted to them speaking with one another and practicing that professional dialect. Students are placed in carefully selected pods that reflect maturity level, cognitive ability, and language development. 3. Describe strategies for eliciting student thinking and how your ongoing responses further their learning. Cite examples from the clip(s). I am a huge supporter of the No-Opt-Out strategy that Lemov discusses. During the class period I do everything I can to throw questions back on students. In the video you see that many of the students did not know what it meant to physically support something. I wanted them to wrestle with describing the image because I wanted them to remember that to support something means, to hold up. If Id given them the answer, they would have immediately forgotten it. I also have them discuss frequently with their partners so that they can apply the information theyve been given and make it their own by explaining, or teaching their partners. 4. Reflection a. Reflect on students learning of concepts and academic language as featured in the video clip(s). Identify both successes and missed opportunities for monitoring all students learning and for building their own understanding of skills and strategies for comprehending and/or composing text. Students learned the definition of supporting details and how they relate to the main idea. Students also were able to visualize that supporting details are holding up the main idea in the same way a chair holds up a person sitting in it. In the video, I was actually disappointed with the energy level of the lesson. While implementing it, I felt like things were moving quickly and students were engaged. After watching the video, I feel like the energy level was fairly low and that students were not as engaged as Id previously thought. Students were MORE engaged because of the frequent partner discussions and student examples. However, they were not particularly interested in the lesson as it was being presented.

b. If you could do it over, what might you have done to take advantage of missed opportunities or to improve the learning of students with diverse learning needs and characteristics? I would definitely add more theatrical learning examples that would draw them in a little bit more. I need to become more comfortable with using students as examples. I would also have spent less time on the definition of to support something and much more time on the chair analogy for supporting details. I would also add some time for whole class demonstrations before I let them do partner work. This would allow me to scaffold for those learners who need a little bit more support before they work with a partner.