Leslie Madorsky TIE 535 November 9, 2012 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. While not featured in the video, students were played a game to practice compliments of 10. They worked with a partner, and their partner picked up pennies with one hand and then picked up the rest of the pennies with their other hand and they both counted the compliments of 10. The students really enjoyed playing the penny grab game and they always enjoy working with their classmates. In addition, I also used students as examples to give them a move concrete example of compliments of 10. I thought that this would keep students on-task because they would want to be called to the front. b. How did these strategies reflect students academic or language development, social/emotional development, or cultural and lived experiences? I am teaching first graders and first graders love to be up and moving. At this age, students enjoy being in front of their peers and typically want to come to the front of the class. Plus, there was a lot of modeling and concrete examples. I did this because a majority of my students are performing below level. Almost all of the students really work and try very hard, but there are certain concepts they just have not grasped yet. Because of this, I knew that it would be most beneficial for my students to see how to think about the topic (modeling at the board while explaining my thinking and how I figured it out), concrete examples (students in front of the class), and then having hands on experience (penny grab game). These three strategies gave my students a better understanding of the concept. While they will still need more practice, and they will eventually begin to understand we were adding the numbers and how to add numbers, they all got something from the lesson. 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? In order for my students to understand this particular lesson, they had to understand what the word compliment means. At one point during the lesson I explained that compliment, for our purposes, meant partners. I explained that two numbers were going to be partners; they were going to work together in order to make a total of 10. I knew that explaining that numbers were going to be partners was going to be something my students understood because they do work with a partner pretty regularly. In addition, I knew that explaining the numbers were partners would be relevant to my students and that that would lead to them understanding they had to have two different numbers. Plus, using this language helped my students to understand that the word partners does not always have to mean that people are working together, but partners can mean that

there are two things together; partners can also mean pairs. 3. Describe strategies for eliciting student thinking and how your ongoing responses further their learning. Cite examples from the clip(s). In the very beginning of the lesson I drew 10 stick-figure students up on the board. I drew two that were smaller and eight that were larger. I asked the students what the difference was between the two groups of students and that led me to ask them if there were still 10 students even though some of them different. Therefore, I was able to explain to my students that even though they looked different, I still had 10 students drawn on the board all together. This particular concept will be useful for them in the future. I assumed that the different sizes of the students would lead to some confusion and I wanted to ensure that they understood that I was not concerned about their size, but rather I was only focusing on the total. By doing this, students were able to understand the focus of the lesson was figuring what two numbers could be added together to equal10 total. 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. After reviewing the worksheets they used for the penny grab game I concluded that about half of the students got the lesson and the other half did not. There were certain students I knew would struggle with the concept so I focused on monitoring how their groups were working together. However, there were other students who could be described as on the bubble that probably could have used more direct instruction and monitoring from me that was not provided due to my focus on the lowest-tiered students. However, some of the partner groups I strategically had a lower-tiered student working with a student who typically grasps the concepts and grasps them rather quickly. My hope was that by doing that the students that struggle would be helped by their partner. While I did see that in some partnerships, I saw that in others students were more-or-less working on their own. In the future, I would explain to the higher-achieving students that I am partnering them with a classmate that needs a little extra help and I want them to help them. On the hand, I worry that that idea may be a little too difficult for first graders to understand. I think as the year goes on, and the idea that as a class we are a team continues to grow, I could have students helping their peers. Until then, I will need to continue to closely monitor the struggling students without assuming that everyone else can handle the task on their own. It will be a balancing act, but I believe that as a teacher it is of the utmost importance that I learn to balance all of my students needs a little bit better. 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? As mentioned above, I would balance the needs of all my students a little bit better. However, in terms of what I would have done as to what was seen in the video I would have modeled a little bit more. Explaining compliments of 10 without really teaching adding to my students was a little difficult for me. Therefore, I think for them to

understand better what their task was, as well as make the concept a little more clear, I would have explained that the two numbers were added together and that the two numbers they got always had to equal 10. Also, the explanation of the penny grab game was not quite as explicit as it should have been. If I could do that lesson again, I would more clearly explain how to play the game and also explain that the amount of pennies in one hand and the amount of pennies in the other hand would always equal, or add up to, 10. Then, I would have modeled how to play the game a few more times and not just once. Teaching such young students, I must model everything. The more difficult concepts, like the one featured in this lesson, needed to modeled several times and not just once.