Strategies
This unit will include many pedagogical strategies that will make the material more accessible to my students. I have found scaffolding techniques to work well with my student population. Scaffolding gives students a context, motivation, or foundation so they can understand the new information being taught. I plan on using several different scaffolding techniques: collaborative group sharing, motivational context to pique student curiosity, gradual release, and a graphic organizer in the form of a timeline.
Students need to be drawn into the lesson, with what is often referred to as a "hook" or more formally an "anticipatory set." A good scaffolding technique for anticipatory set should create enthusiasm, curiosity, and motivation. The other important component at the beginning of a lesson is to set a learning goal. Goals help to get the mind ready to look for that particular new information and pay closer attention to it. Almost all lessons begin with the goal, however, some "hooks" work better when students discover the goal as a result of that hook. Either way, they will know what they are required to learn for that lesson and be motivated from the first activity that piqued their interest. I will be creating two groups within the class, whereby one gets fun activities and the other does not. After this activity they may be able to guess the learning goal. If not, I will uncover the learning goal on the board and we will discuss at this point.
Students will be collaborating in their groups as they uncover the meaning of the group of laws we have come to call Jim Crow laws. This is a collaborative form of the technique that is often referred to as jigsaw. First students, who are already in heterogeneous groups of four, will be numbered. After the students in the group have read the Jim Crow law given to them on a 3x5 cards, they will discuss what the law says and where it was enacted. They need to decide whether the law was limiting the African American in the areas of voting, housing, marriage, or public places. I will then have the students who were given the number 1, rotate to another group taking their 3x5 card with them. These students will share their card with the group and discuss again as described above. Then I will have the student who has been numbered 2, rotate to the next group, share and then discuss. The students continue this until all four participants in the group have had a chance to rotate. By the time they finish the four rotations, they will have read four different Jim Crow laws, from four different states, and should see the common thread running through all the laws. The members of the group will share the pattern they have found. The students will share their findings. I will then record their findings on chart paper under the headings: transportation, restaurants, water fountains, school, or restrooms. This collaborative strategy teaches the students to work together, share information, discuss content, get a chance to move around the room breaking up the routine, and provide a kinesthetic activity.
Gradual release is another scaffolding technique that is research-based and effective with English Language Learners, as well as students who are below grade level. It consists of the teacher first modeling the skill or activity, giving the student a chance to see what is required of them. In the second lesson, I will be making a model timeline of three events in my life, and then they will be doing a timeline of three events in their lives. Then the students and the teacher do the same activity together but with different content (actual civil rights events). At this stage the students are simply mimicking the activity while the teacher demonstrates again. I will demonstrate how to date our timeline and they will mimic it on their timeline. Now the students have done the actual activity and have it in front of them. It is important, at this point, to ask if there are questions, or further define any procedures or constraints that might make it easier for the student to perform independently. In the final stage, the students perform the activity either with their group, if you think they need more practice, or independently. Our final timeline will be a group activity, whereby each group will place their event on the timeline. Finally, the individual students will be copying this information on their own personal timeline. The teacher then becomes the facilitator and simply observes, gives suggestions, answers questions or encourages the student to continue on their current path. The acronym for this procedure is I do it, We do it, You do it (IWY.) I will be doing a formative assessment, as I observe the groups working and individual students completing their timelines. The timelines will be collected and graded based on completeness, correctness of the date placement, understanding the concept of plotting on a timeline, and listing all civil rights events.
The last strategy I plan on integrating in these three lessons is grounded in the strategy called project-based learning. Each reading unit, which is six weeks long, has a thematic project. The thematic project will be learning about a civil rights leader and doing a biographical report. I will use an assessment rubric to set my expectations. I will review this rubric with the students before they start their projects. Since this will be the first project of the year, I will scaffold the actual research project instructing them on how to read informational text, search for the information on the computer, gather information on cards and writing the source on the back of each card. By scaffolding this first research project, they will have the skills for their future student-chosen unit projects. After completion of their thematic research project, they will write the information into a short biographical report and present it orally to the class. The class will listen and take notes. Students will be graded on their research, their organization of the researched data, the quality of the written biographical report in terms of grammar, sentence structure, and paragraph cohesiveness, their oral presentation skills and their listening skills.
Throughout these three lessons, I will function as the facilitator, frame questions, structure the content into meaningful tasks, and use my knowledge to develop social skills among their students. Since this lesson will be during the first two weeks of school, I will use the data I am given as to each student's ability level in order to level the individual students within their groups. There are more specific details about this in the Classroom Activities section. The first lesson will be a formative assessment, that is, noted subjective assessments of the groups and individual students as observed by the teacher. The timeline and the final thematic unit project will be graded on a rubric that was shared with the student prior to beginning the project.
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