FIELD EXPERIENCE REFLECTION

EDU 425

Kyle Edward

Baker College
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Jumping into a teaching setting can, at times, be overwhelming. The students are

unknown, the environment is new, and the fear of failure fills ones head. This is the thought

process behind creating a Thematic Unit to use as practice in a real classroom setting. The

creation of the unit is practice for what is to come in the classroom, and there are many different

elements that need to be evaluated in order for the lesson to be a success or failure. The

Thematic Unit that was implemented consisted of connecting nonfiction news articles to not only

the students lives, but also to the Common Core standards for the grade level (6th grade) and the

summative assessment project for the class (a memoir). The unit included news articles pulled

from the website Newsela, and were adapted to a 5th to 6th grade level and worksheets that were

used to assess the students knowledge and understanding. At the conclusion to every lesson, a

connection was made to the memoirs that the students would be writing, and how they could use

the literacy strategies to improve and expand upon their memoirs. This thematic unit was a

success and many of the students grasped the concepts during the unit.

During the planning and implementation of the lessons, it was important to make sure

that multiple avenues of comprehension were accomplished. Students were encouraged and

willing to read the articles out loud in the classroom. Questions were asked about the articles not

only from the instructors position, but also the students position. Speaking, reading, writing,

and listening were incorporated into every lesson. Students were encouraged to work in groups

during the lesson focused upon questioning. During that specific lesson, not only were students

reading out loud and listening to the article being read, but students worked with each other to

develop questions they had about the article and one student from each group wrote the thoughts

and questions down on a worksheet. Additionally, the thoughts and questions were written down

on the overhead projector in order to validate the student responses and model appropriate
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behavior. The most difficult of the connection elements to evaluate and accomplish was

listening. While directions were given on a regular basis, some of the students struggled with

following the directions that were given orally. This simply means that not only should

directions be given orally, but they should also be in writing to enforce the expectations. It was

regularly encouraged for students to orally give their responses to the more extensive

assignments and present them in front of the class. This helped the students to refine their

speaking skills and give examples of appropriate responses to the task. Overall, integration of

the literacy elements was sufficiently incorporated into the lessons and the desired outcomes

were met most of the time.

In order to reach all of the students in the classroom in an effective manner, different

differentiation strategies needed to be incorporated into the lessons. First of all, the articles

needed to have adaptations available for English Language Learning students. This was an

element that was available from the Newsela website, with translations available. Additionally, a

copy of the news article was available for each student as well as the article being projected onto

the front board. This was supplemented with a student following along in the article with their

finger in order to make sure that all students were aware of where oral reading was taking place.

There were a couple of students in the classroom with learning disabilities, and one of them had

a paraprofessional help to read and understand the text, and another had the help of the regular

classroom teacher. Throughout every lesson, comprehension checks were made by asking

students what each section was about, what the main ideas were, and what the most interesting

information was in each section. This helped to put the text into the words of the students rather

than just the words of the instructor. All of these adaptations were relatively simple to
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incorporate, and appeared to help the students participate appropriately in the assignment at

hand.

Technology was a difficult thing to incorporate into the classroom, with few opportunities

available. The students in the classroom did not have access to computers on a regular basis, but

if they did, access to the articles would have been available to them. Having computer

availability would also help with students who need the article adapted to a lower reading level

without taking away the overall context of the text. Projecting the article on the overhead was

helpful during all of the lessons not only when having students follow along with a finger, but

also to keep attention on the task at hand. The document camera helped when specific

techniques such as underlining or putting brackets around sections needed to be demonstrated

and the students were able to visually see what the techniques were and how they were

incorporated with the use of this technology. For example, during the inference lesson, it was

important to make sure that the students knew which words were being focused upon in the

vocabulary, and underlining was easily demonstrated on the actual article when it came to

finding a working definition of the vocabulary words. By modelling the expected behavior on

the same text that the students had, they could easily follow along and see what was expected of

them.

The overall teaching of the lessons was not only focused upon the literacy strategies, but

also making sure that the students were interested in the articles and the information around

them. That was the main idea of the unit. Having open discussions with the students about the

articles helped them to use the strategies informally while discussing the information with their

peers. The first lesson, monitoring comprehension, was based around an article about a lawsuit.

Monitoring comprehension came from discussing the information with the students, and
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assessing whether they were able to understand the article and putting their understanding into a

visual image. Many students drew detailed pictures of what they felt the article was about.

Dialogue was included in the images, and they varied depending on each of the students

understanding. The questioning was the first attempt at group work. The students easily went

off topic, and this pushed the time limit to force a change in the format back to individual work.

It was determined that the students had a difficult time staying on task while working in groups,

and after discussing that with the cooperating teacher, it was determined that group work was not

the best option for this specific class. The ability to adapt the lessons is necessary when class

periods are only 45 minutes long and there is a significant amount of material to cover. The

making connections lesson was facilitated using a worksheet with columns titled What I

learned and It reminds me of in order to break down connections for the students to make to

background knowledge. This helped the students to draw connections to the events in the article

and find ways to write stories about an event in their lives it reminded them of. Throughout the

lesson, it was also important to go around to the students and make sure that they understood

what they were supposed to be doing, and keep them on track. Encouragement was always given

to students that were on task and producing the desired results, and guidance was given to those

who needed it. Making sure that the students were grasping the importance of the lesson was

important, but making sure that each student knew that their work mattered was just as

important.

The parent letter was communicated in a way that expressed to the parents that their

student would be learning something new, outside the current curriculum. There were no

responses to the letter. It was important to note in the letter that it was a learning experience for

all those involved, and that it was part of a school project for the person teaching the lesson. The
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basic details of the thematic unit were expressed, including the idea of nonfiction news articles

and the teaching of different literacy strategies. Overall, it seems as if the parent letter was

effective in its purpose.

Overall, the thematic unit was consistent in nature. Each lesson began with a reflection

on the previous weeks lesson and a summary of the main ideas of the previous article. Each

strategy chosen kept in mind the connection to the memoirs that the students were working on

and how the students could use the strategy in that work; therefore, each lesson was concluded

with the connection to the memoir assignment. It was regularly noted how the articles chosen

were relevant to things going on in the world. One article discussed lava firehoses that were

occurring in Hawaii and how those occurrences affected the island and tourism. The lesson was

focused on questioning, and the connection was made that students should think of questions that

the readers might ask when they are reading the memoirs, including when and why something

happened. The articles were also consistently read out loud in order to facilitate those who

needed the auditory help while also providing the article on paper and on the board as a visual

aid for those who benefit most from that style of learning. Making sure that the lessons were

consistent helped to establish routine. While observing the cooperating teacher, it was

determined that this was a strategy that she used as well, and therefore it was important to use the

same strategy. Overall, the biggest issues during the lessons were consistent time management

and management of classroom behavior. What began as 20 minute lessons turned into full class

period lessons. It was difficult to determine how much time to allot for open discussion. By the

completion of the unit, all of the lessons were completed within the allotted amount of time.

Overall, the lesson planning process flowed well with introductions and closings staying

consistent with the recollection of the previous weeks lesson and the connections to the memoir
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at the end. It was important to stay consistent with the cooperating teachers regular plans by

making the connections and using similar structure to her personal lessons. As mentioned

before, keeping the lessons consistent helps to maintain focus and order in the classroom. The

level of participation in the lessons was also exceptional. Many students enjoyed sharing their

connections and responses to the articles, and some of the articles opened them up to things that

they had never heard about before. Completing the thematic unit with helping the students work

on their memoirs, making the personal and instructional connections with them was enlightening.