Matt Elliott April 1, 2013 CEP 804a Reading lesson Section I: Information About Students: The students that

will be emerging themselves in my reading unit are in 7th grade, at Leslie Middle school, in the general education setting. These students will be undertaking a larger science project, where they will be the captains of their own inquiry. The students in the classroom are both male and female, predominantly Caucasian, ranging from ages 11-13. There are seven students that currently have IEP's and are being serviced through a team teaching approach. These students' with IEP's all have identified Learning Disabilities, in reading and writing. As a result, these students' needs were taken into consideration through every step of the unit. The inquiry unit was formulated around the students "typical" day in the classroom. Each class begins with a warm up that activates prior knowledge, and when necessary, is utilized as a pre-teaching strategy. Section II: PRE-READING STRATEGIES My goals for pre-reading My goals for pre-reading were to not only encourage students to become willing to "jump" into their own science topics, but to understand how researchers go about finding the most important/crucial information. It was my hope that students would understand the processes of researching. I attempted to encourage students through their own excitement about their science projects. With this in mind, I believe my pedagogical approach was successful. What happened: I began this lesson by utilizing the "warm up" as a pre-teaching platform to the reading strategy. I initiated the lesson by asking students to write down who their audience was for this project. Students were given time to write down who would be seeing their information. With this in mind I was able to model the reading strategies not only through the lens of a researcher, but an author, with a specific audience in mind. Following this think aloud/pre-teaching strategy I began modeling to students how I would find information regarding my topic.

I used pre-teaching strategies and think aloud models, along with classroom technology to explore how a researcher discovers information. I initially showed students what information I could decide to look for through my research. I selected

to organize my research in the following ways; human effects, causes, solutions, potential problems. I used these headings to model to students how I would go about searching for this information. During my modeling, I used examples and nonexamples to show students both information worth using, and information that is interesting, but not helpful. I used this strategy to help show students, that you may come across a multitude of information, but as the researcher, you need to keep in mind your topic, your audience, and what you want to inform them about. Students were given the opportunity to explore their projects through different types of informational mediums; the internet, research books, encyclopedias, etc. Each medium incorporated a mini lesson. I pre-taught how to use Google, thinking about "key words" for researching and cautioning students about the reality of information found on the internet. Students were not only taught how to focus their attention on key aspects of their projects, but identifying if the information they were researching was accurate, they did this by learning how to double check their findings, with multiple sources. We also looked at particular books focused on single subjects, like air pollution, and discovered how to go about finding the necessary information. The "I do it, we do it, you do it" philosophy of teaching was incorporated through these mini lesson, and the units entirety. This was particularly due to the fact that this was most students first time with such an intensive researched based project. In order to encourage students, I selected to do a project along with them. While students researched their own projects, they were able to see me discover information on air pollution alongside them. This not only allowed me to help with the scaffolding up process, but it allowed me to continue encouraging students through the entire process, which was quite lengthy.

Reflection and Critique: Looking back over the pre-teaching process, I feel there were some strengths along with some weaknesses. Initially, I believe that my pre-teaching strategy worked well. I think that the modeling approach used to help students, worked. By breaking the process down into simple steps, this initially daunting project became simplified. By continuous think aloud type modeling students were able to see, not only how to take the most pertinent information from the text, but to keep their audience in mind. I also would suggest that continued support from myself was crucial for students' success. By doing a project alongside the students, they were able to see where I may have ran into a problem, and needed to discover how I can go about solving the problem. I believe as a result, students' final projects benefited.

With the strengths of this unit, I do recognize two areas that I would focus on if I were to do this again. These areas may also be considered weaknesses of this particular lesson/unit. I think the time spent, and amount of subjects that were undertaken made this process difficult for me. It was easy to teach general strategies for discovering information, however; because students were allowed to select any area in science that they were interested in, I had trouble accommodating all their needs. I do not believe there were any large areas of issues, but the vastness of projects that students were doing, made my job a lot more difficult in order to ensure that each student understood how to research their specific project.

Section III: DURING/AFTER READING STRATEGIES My goals for during/after reading My goal for students following the reading strategy was to be able to implement their findings into the writing phase of this unit. This reading lesson was taught alongside the POWER + P strategy. It was my hope that by combining both the reading and writing process into the project simultaneously, students would be less overwhelmed by the size of the project. It was also my hope that students would be able to generalize the process in both the writing and reading stages to other classes, and future projects. With this in mind, I structured my think alouds to incorporate how I could use these reading and writing strategies in other subjects. Description of the lesson Following the pre-teaching strategies students were given two days of in class research time. Again, this process followed the "P" and "O" stages in the POWER + P strategy. So by this time, students had their projects planned and organized. Students were given opportunities to research their projects through the various mediums, that they were exposed to during my pre-teaching mini lessons. Students were monitored and "step in" occurred when necessary to ensure students were following the reading/researching strategies they were exposed to. This included recognizing headings, subheadings, looking for bold words, close reading, skimming, and summarizing. The first day of research students were invited to work with one another as they focused on discovering information regarding their topics. They were encouraged to monitor one another as they found information, always drawing their findings back to their topic, their organization, and their audience; to ensure that the information they were finding was valuable to their overall work.

On the second day, students were asked to work more individually; to encourage self-discovery and individual research based inquiry. This process took a good deal of overseeing to guarantee students success. Students were not just set free to "fend" for themselves, but were highly monitored from a distance, to allow them the opportunity to practice the strategies that they had recently been exposed to. Reflection: Looking back I feel like this lesson was a success. I feel because of the time spent pre-teaching the reading strategies and the way the strategies were broken up into two days helped the structuring up of the lesson; allowing students to have an increased success rate. Again, as a result of the amount of projects that were being researched some students individual needs were not met as well as I would have liked. I feel if I were to do this again, I would somehow categorize what topics students could select to research, as opposed to just letting them select anything. More structure on my part, would have made my life easier, and ensured a greater success rate with students.

Section IV: TEACHING PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICES My goals for teaching principles and practices For this lesson, my goal was simple. I wanted the students to understand the process that researchers undertake following the organization of their given project. My goal was to model to students how researchers "pull out" the most important information regarding their topic, while focusing on their determined audience. Furthermore, it was my goal that students not only understand how to "pull out" the most important information regarding their topics, but were able to generalize the strategies to other subject areas. Teaching principles and practices: This lesson focused highly on modeling strategies and structuring up. It was made clear to students using different information mediums how to "pull out" the most important information regarding their projects. Using think alouds like "I know that I am looking for human causes of air pollution, so I will look for dark subheadings that can point me in the right direction." This process was used continuously during the pre-teaching stage of the lesson, as well as during the two days when students were given time for in class research. During this time, students were monitored and I "stepped in" when it was appropriate. For instance, when students were gathering information using their organizers from POWER + P and were struggling with gathering information that aligned with their organized subject areas, I would step in, again using think alouds and asking questions that guided their thinking, but did not directly show them how to find the information they were looking for. It was important to me that students utilized their own researcher skills that they had

been exposed to during the pre-teaching, and strategy teaching of the reading lesson. Reflection: Looking back I feel my teaching practices were successful. I understood from the beginning that this project was intense for students, and was something that would need a lot of modeling and patience. Students were given the tools to be successful, and I simply had to monitor their progress and step in when necessary. Overall I was proud of this lesson, and I feel students did benefit not only for their science projects, but for future projects as well.

Section V: TEACHING TOOLS AND PRACTICES My goals for teaching tools The goal for my teaching tools was simple. I wanted students to take what they had learned during the POWER + P strategy, and implement their graphic organizer into their research. Students were first taught multiple ways to organize their research based on the POWER + P strategy, and from there were supported through this reading lesson as to how to discover their information successfully. Teaching tools used: The major tools that were used during the lesson was; separate information mediums, and technology. Students were shown how to utilize different forms of informational mediums and "pull out" the most important pieces of information. They were shown not only how to do this through hard cover books, but from the internet as well. This opportunity also lead to the instruction of plagiarizing, and how to correctly construct a bibliography page. Reflection: Again, I believe the teaching tools that were present for the students were successful. Students learned how to take information from multiple sources, organize it into meaningful/purposeful categories, and then present it with a particular audience in mind. I don't know if there is anything that I would do differently. I feel that students did understand the reasoning behind these lessons, and now are able to generalize the techniques learned from this reading lesson, to other classes. I can ensure that these students were successful, because of the final projects that were shown. In order to complete the assignment students, needed to do a large amount of research, and then present to me in the form of a research report. The

majority of the students were able to do this, with great success. It was clear that for some the strategies they learned were very beneficial, and for others more work is necessary to make sure they can be successful with the techniques they were exposed to in their future academic careers.