Strategies
Teacher Modeling: Teacher Talk
Teacher modeling is when you demonstrate the activity you want your students to perform. They complete the example along with you to understand how the activity should be performed independently. This is a good strategy when introducing new activities, especially for special education students. This acts as guided practice for those students who need a visual example on how to complete various activities. Teacher talk is a form of modeling; this is where you speak out loud the thoughts going in your head when approaching an activity. For the unit, I will model asking questions aloud about the author's intentions for writing "All Summer in a Day." I will also speak aloud what I think the answer is and what personal connection I made to help the students understand what they are required to do.
Annotating: Talking to the Text
For many students, it is valuable to mark up the text. It's meant to act as a conversation they are having with the text; students write notes and highlight on the pages of the text. Students write in their personal connections, questions they have about the text, and underline and define unknown words right in their text. This shows them their progress as they read the narrative and helps them refer back to the text fast if need to state information from the text to address a question. We will be using the "Talking to Text" strategy when reading the novel Watsons Go to Birmingham-1963. This will act as a partner activity to their journal writing.
Journal Writing
Journal writing is an incredibly flexible instructional tool. It allows for students to have to opportunity to speculate and reflect on paper. I am the only one who will read their entries so students can be confident that their ideas, observations, emotions, and writing will be accepted without criticism. They will be graded based on participation and effort based on a student-generated rubric. Students will also be given examples of quality journal entries. I want to incorporate the use of a journal while reading the novel Watsons Go to Birmingham-1963. As we navigate through the novel, I want students to record their reactions to the text and describe any personal connections they make as we read. I will also present writing prompts that they will also need to reflect upon in their journal.
Collaborative Learning/Group Work and Think Pair Share
Working together with peers is a life skill that students need to practice and accomplish. With collaborative learning, it allows students to learn to work together towards a common goal. Each member of the group is accountable to each other and required to participate in order to achieve the final outcome. Students need to learn how to work respectfully with others and learn how to consider each other's points of views and opinions. Collaboration also benefits students in that by listening to their peers the can develop better understanding of the task or content; it also extends their thinking by hearing other perspectives that they may not have considered or thought of. Individual and group evaluations are essential to monitor the group's work and their progress working as a team.
Think-Pair-Share is a specific type of responding to questions strategy. It allows for collaborative learning in that students think and generate their own conclusions about a prompt or question. They then have to paired up with their assigned partner (or a peer of their choice depending on circumstances) and share the conclusions they each came up with. The Think-Pair- Share strategy will be implemented into the unit in allowing the students to collaborate and share their ideas on the author's intentions and persuasive techniques used. I normally pair students based on ability level where I will have a higher-achieving student work with a student who made need more assistance.
Proficient Reading Strategies
The proficient reading strategies are techniques student use to break-down and analyze a story or text to gain better comprehension of what was written. I teach my students these strategies at the beginning of the school year to teach them how to break-down and analyze text. I like linking the proficient reading strategies with analyzing the author's intentions because going through the steps as proficient readers, they are able to further analyze the text, determine the point the author is making and the strategy they use to influence the reader. Students are asked to generate predictions before they read, make connections to the text as they read, write down questions the author leaves them with, make inferences, visualize, determine the main idea, particularly what they author is trying to tell their audience, and summarize what the author is saying and how they are accomplishing their goal. I will use these strategies in reading the short-story "All Summer in a Day" and it will tie into the teacher modeling strategy.
Graphic Organizers
Graphic organizers are a visual tool that helps display the relationship amongst facts and ideas. It allows the content to become easier to break down because you are able to categorize related information and it becomes more visually organized and comprehendible. For the unit, we will use graphic organizers to help with planning our final writing piece that corresponds with the novel.
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