LESSON TITLE: _Critical Reading Strategies_

Lesson #: ___1___

TEACHER NAME: ___Songting Hu___ DATE: ____March 3, 2014____

Attach any handouts or materials required for this lesson.
Preparation/Planning
ESL Course: Academic
Reading Level 4

Level

Beginning


Intermediate


Advanced


Multilevel
Topic/Theme: Critical
Thinking

Objectives
Listening Students will listen to questions that prompt critical thinking.
Speaking Students will work together to form a cooperative learning community
by sharing their critical reading questions and answers. Students can get
prepared for the classroom atmosphere in real American Institutions.
Reading* Students will be able to read texts with critical thinking skills through
raising higher-order questions by using Cue Question handout.
Writing Students will be able to write in-depth answers toward higher-order
questions by using following the checklist of Key Element.
Bridging
What background knowledge
do the students already have?
Each student needs to read a novel during the whole semester. One of
their assignments is keeping a reading response journal everyday and
bringing it to each class session. In this journal, they are asked to
practice asking higher order questions the teacher has provided them,
but from my analysis of your journal entries, they appear to struggle to
ask meaningful questions and give in-depth answers. For example:

Teacher: What is the question you have asked?

Student A:, Is lying common?

Me: Has the author already told you that lying is common?

Student A: YeahHe said many people lie.

Me: OK. Do you think it is a good question to ask?

Student A: Im not sure nowIts too hard

They finished three intermediate-order readings entitled: Starbucks,
Living with Lies and the First the Hijab, then the Turban? and they
have practiced the skills of raising higher-order questions and asking
these questions by completing a table with three columns (find facts
from the text, your questions and you opinion). From my review of
their tables, but they appear to be more comfortable asking some
knowledge and comprehension type questions. Only one out of four
students could ask a higher order question.

What will you do to activate
or link students prior
knowledge or experience to
upcoming content?
I will use the questions that the teacher has asked them during the
previous classes based on the three readings to let them identify the
order of these questions by using Blooms Taxonomy.
I will use the three readings to let them think of more higher-order
questions using Blooms Taxonomy.
I will use the higher-order questions they have asked in the three
readings to let them infer and polish their answers by using the Key
Element checklist that I give to them.

Engagement with New Material
What will you do to engage
students in the active learning
of the new material?
At the beginning of this class, I will share with the students my own
learning experience in my graduate program by showing them some
questions that arose in my classes based on the reading material we
were using. I am intending to help students realize the importance of
thinking critically and will give them a rationale for learning this skill
in response to text. I am also going to share with them what I have
observed in their reading journals and the gap between what the teacher
is expecting of them (critical thinking) and what they are writing
(summaries) so as to let them feel motivated to learn.

What will you do to ensure
that all students are engaged?
I will let them do pair work to form a cooperative learning community.
During this process, I will be walking around and observing their pair
work. Pairs will volunteer their answers after students have had ample
time to work on their activity
Application
What opportunities will you
provide students to practice
and apply their
knowledge/skill to meet the
objectives for this lesson? To
apply to other contexts?
1. When learning how to ask higher-order questions, in pairs, students
will use the prompts/sentence frames provided in handouts to develop
their own questions reflecting different critical thinking orders.
2. When learning how to identify higher-order questions, students will
be given a handout called Critical Thinking Questions Review,
which lists some questions asked by their teacher before. We will go
over the first questions together and identify the order. Students will
then have an opportunity to go through the rest of questions and
identify the orders in pairs and independently.
3. When learning how to answer higher-order questions, they will work
in pairs to answer at least four questions in the Critical Thinking
Questions Review. We will debrief by asking each pair to share an
example.
4. I will ask students to work independently on two separate paragraphs
for which they have developed their questions in the last class. I will
ask some students to share their answers and I will record all the
answers to check for understanding.
5. As a final/summative assessment, I will provide students with two or
three new paragraphs (150-200 words) and let them to ask and answer
two or three higher-order questions. I will debrief if time permits. I will
collect the answers to assess understanding.
Assessment
How will you assess their 1. When teaching them how to ask higher-order questions, I will
learning of the objectives? debrief to check for understanding by asking students to provide
examples of questions they developed for each order.
2. When teaching them how to identify question orders in Critical
Thinking Questions Review, I will debrief about what they understand
about the critical thinking required of each question.
3. I will ask each pair to share an example about how they responded to
the questions in the Critical Thinking Questions Review.
4. In the final assessment, I will assess their understanding by asking
them to ask and answer two or three higher-order questions with two or
three new paragraphs and questions.
Closing
How will you help students
recap the learning and link it
back to the original purpose of
the lesson?
We will go through their Reading Response Journal instructions to
figure out which ones are higher-order questions. Students can share
their thinking about how to improve their journal for their next entry.
Technology
If applicable for your context
and your lesson, how will you
meaningfully integrate
technology into your lesson?

1. I will use PowerPoint to illustrate my teaching points. I will show
them the exact paragraphs from their reading to demonstrate
2. I will use the projector to show students ideas of new questions they
want to ask in the reading and their answers towards these higher-order
questions. When these volunteers are sharing their ideas, other students
can go through their ideas visually and understand their ideas
immediately. Other students can also point out some ideas that the
volunteers have mentioned ask for clarification or begin a discussion
around those ideas.
Reflection
What went well? How do you
know?
The greatest improvement was that there was an increased ability for
students to respond to the critical thinking questions. This is especially
evidenced in the Critical Thinking Questions Review and their Reading
Response Journal. Instead of just claiming their ideas or opinions, my
students started to add more explanations and examples to make their
responses interesting and persuasive. For example, student H improved
most in this part. She used to make a claim without using explanations,
as in the following example: I love the way [the author] introduces
this chapter. It is very realistic. After my Phase I, she explained her
thinking by saying, I felt happy when I read this chapter because the
yellow fever was under control. Everyone felt relieved and happy!.
She also raised a question to predict the following chapter, I am
wondering when the yellow fever will start again?
What didnt go as planned? 1. Helping them identify the thinking orders did not help students
to think critically. On the contrary, it caused students more
confusion. When looking at the Cue Question handout I gave
to them, my professor also felt it was too overwhelming for
students to understand the meaning in each order. When
explaining the meaning of each order, the students and I found
some key words to help us identify. For example, many why
questions could be found in the order of analyzing. However,
this caused a problem for the students because they began to
generalize Why as an analysis question without paying
attention to the context of the question.
2. The sentence frames were not used with authenticity. I usually
saw some students choosing an order they wanted to try and
pick a sentence frame to create a question, and sometimes their
questions lacked authenticity or relevance and as a result, did
not make sense to me. An example in my field notes was, Can
you elaborate on the reason why his life is death? Though
this sentence frame could generate a higher-order question, I
found that the quality of this question was low in that the
students were able to use the frame, but lacked the ability to use
them in the appropriate context.
3. The students tended to perform better when orally explaining
their answers. However, most of the assessment in this lesson
depended on writing, and they usually skipped some details
once they felt difficult to organize information.
What contingency plan did
you employ?
The students felt confused when I assigned the group. I gave each
student a number and said the students with the same number would be
in the same group, but they still felt confused since they had never done
that before. Instead, I called them and used my body language to
arrange them in different groups, and then I drew pictures on the
whiteboard to explain what they should do in groups.

What would you do
differently next time?
1. I would simplify my teaching by helping them only identify
whether a question is a lower or higher-order thinking question
to support them to think beyond the text when answering a
higher-order question.
2. I would design a new handout based on the revised Blooms
Taxonomy to provide students with a clear introduction of each
thinking order to give them some ideas when asking questions.
Student could keep the Cue Questions as a sentence bank to
help them refine their sentences.
3. I would provide more opportunities for them to orally express
their thinking
Did your students meet the
purpose and objectives for this
lesson? How do you know?
My students were able to distinguish the higher order thinking and
lower order thinking. They began to know that when answering higher
order thinking questions, they would need to think beyond the text and
give some explanations and examples instead of just claiming. I could
see their improvements from the Critical Thinking Question Review
and Reading Response Journal.
What do your students need
next? How do you know?
They need to learn more about how to brainstorm ideas more
effectively. Some of the students told me that they met with some
problems when brainstorming ideas to answer higher order critical
thinking questions, especially when they worked alone. I also realized
that brainstorming ideas was a gap for them by observing their in-class
activities. Some of them got stuck when encountering with unfamiliar
topics.
What did you learn about your
glows and grows as a teacher?
What can you do to work on
When reflecting on myself, I usually ran out of time because I found
that the content was abstract and hard to teach. Sometimes I could not
have time to close my class in that I used to teach till the last minute of
your areas needing growth? my class. When talking with my professors, she recommended me that
whatever happened, I should spare five minutes on closing my lesson
and acknowledging students my plan for the next class, so that they
would get prepare for my next class, such as handing in their
assignments. As for me, I could also calm down myself by closing my
class in an organized way.































Critical Thinking Questions Review

How Starbucks Created a Brand on a Budget?:

1. Why is Starbucks so successful among the world?
Which category does this question fit in? (Underline the sentence starter):
My original answer:






My new answer:







2. What would be your suggestion of another place to sell Starbucks coffee and increase its
profits?
Which category does this question fit in? (Underline the sentence starter):
My original answer:






My new answer:








Name: _______________________
How long have you learned English? : ________________
Whats your purpose for studying at ELA?
_________________________________________________________