Analysis of Lesson Plan #3
Writing an expository essay of Jennings’s two character traits and how they help him overcome the challenges is the embedded assessment of the unit. Before unpacking the assessment, I needed to assess the students’ prior knowledge and how well they were prepared for it because my learners were vastly diverse and I needed to design lesson plans with adaption and accommodation for diverse learners. I used the students’ dialectical journals as pre-assessment tools, reading through them to see how well they understood the main character Jennings and how clearly they could identify the character traits. This showed my respect for my students and I designed my lesson plans based on my understanding of the diversity of the learners. For example, from their dialectical journals, I learned some students were still confused about what character traits were and had difficulty coming up with meaningful commentaries. I decided to devote a section of the lesson to clarifying the concept and helping them with the commentaries.
I set several learning goals for this lesson. The first two were related to the comprehension of the book and the last two goals directly addressed Writing EALR 2 (students write for different purposes and styles). In this case, it was an expository essay, which they might be less familiar with than the narrative essay. Explaining the connections and reasons required more abstract thinking skills, and that was why one of my learning goals for this lesson was to help all students, including those struggling learners, understand what constituted an expository essay. I used a PowerPoint file to illustrate what an expository essay was and the specific requirements for this essay. The file was self-explanatory, but I still gave hard copies to the IEP students so that they could have something written to refer to.
After the vocabulary routine of Wordly Wise, I started a whole-class cooperative learning activity. Students raised their hands and each listed one or two challenges Jennings faced and Jennings’s positive character traits. I recorded the students’ input into a Notepad file that was simultaneously shown on the Smartboard. While we were doing this, other students took notes and found the pages where these challenges came from. This activity suited the needs of different learners. Those talented students could contribute more, and students can comment on each others’ points. All students could utilize the resources and ideas of the whole class and with a little adaption, use them in their own essays.
In addition to the cooperative-learning activity, I also stressed to the students that individual creativity will also be honored in this assignment.I encouraged them to think independently and come up with their unique introductions to hook the readers and add some spice to their essays. This showed my respect for my students and my attention to their different backgrounds. When I encouraged them to select the character traits from the whole-class list and use the examples from their own dialectical journals, I combined group effort with individual diversity.
Although there were no ESL students in my class, several students did lag behind in language skills since they had just exited the ESL programs. These native speakers of Cantonese, Korean or Spanish seemed to be proficient enough in spoken English; however, they had great hardship in being acquainted with academic languages and in expressing themselves in the formal written form. As a contrast, there were some highly talented students who were capable of writing very sophisticated English essays, using large vocabularies, sentence variations and different figures of speech. This factor determined that I needed to complement the whole-class instruction model with individual one-to-one help. I set aside some time for those students who needed special help, like some IEP students. For them, I guided them through the process of creating the essay step by step with the help of the packet. But for those capable learners, I told them they were free to start drafting the essay without first completing the packet, because the packet might restrict their thinking. This adaption in instruction met the needs of the struggling learners without taking class time from the other students.
The way I introduced the embedded assessment was built on my understanding of the students’ learning. Although this was a summative assessment, I also planned to use it as a means to measure my students’ learning. When they were working on the expository essay, I continuously assessed their reading and writing skills informally and provided constant feedback. I have attached two student essays at the end of this reflection piece. Student Exhibit #1 showed that the student did a good job in explaining his ideas and using effective language. He identified the two characters well and provided thoughtful commentaries. Student Exhibit #2 showed that although the student could identify the two characters, he needed to work on his supporting concrete details and state his own opinion. By reading their essays, I found that teaching them to find certain character traits in the book was far easier than helping them to see the connection and support their ideas with evidence. Next time when I work with my struggling students, I will pay more attention to let them know “Why should I write in this way?” instead of “What should I write about?” Even with the whole class, considering we had so many diverse learners, we could have spent more time letting some students do a “think-aloud” and explain how they drafted the essay to make the thinking process more transparent.
All these shortcomings said, I still think this lesson effectively prepared my different learners for the final assessment. All students were required to write an expository essay, but some just considered it a relatively easy task while some tried with all their might to accomplish the task. My goal was to prepare all my students well for the writing assignment and help them develop the habit of thinking critically and writing diligently. This will lead to a good learning environment that benefits all my learners.
student_sample_1.pdf | |
File Size: | 389 kb |
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student_sample_2.pdf | |
File Size: | 275 kb |
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