Standard 1: Knows and Teaches English as a Subject Matter
Students should develop critical thinking skills throughout their education. In order to encourage my students’ thinking processes, I introduced my “Slip or Trip” mystery lesson plan. This lesson involves listening activities, group collaboration, visual aids, and full class discussion. Students used critical thinking skills to solve a mystery through listening to a story and then while in small groups, searching for clues in a picture. This assignment covered mystery vocabulary and was an introduction into mystery before we started reading our mystery novel. This lesson taught the students how to read for clues, remember characters, and work as a group to solve a crime.
To encourage creativity and aid in the comprehension of text, literature circles can help keep students on track and responsible when reading a story. The Detective Notebook was created for the students to work together in partners as they read through the mystery novel. The students worked in partners and created summaries, answered 20 questions, illustrated a scene, defined words, and listed examples of figurative language. Students were given five chapters at a time to read independently and then answer the set of questions for that section. Students practiced working with partners, comprehension, and applying their knowledge of the novel.
Close and Critical Readings are chosen by the district and used throughout the course of the students’ careers at UCS. CCRs require the students to summarize the text, identify genre and author’s craft, identify theme, and then apply that theme to the real world. CCRs can be completed individually or in groups and considering much of the content of the texts were way over 7th graders’ heads, working in groups proved to be most successful. After reading the text as a class, students were broken up into groups of four and each assigned one of the four CCR questions. Each student's question depended on the color poker chip they picked at random. This lesson assessed each student’s ability to answer a CCR question and work as a group. Full class discussion wrapped up the assignment so students could hear other groups’ answers.
Students usually view grammar as unnecessary and boring. After learning the definition of prepositions and spending some time locating them in sentences, students were assigned a Preposition Fun Packet consisting of three different sections. The first tested their knowledge of listing three different prepositions and then creating phrases with those prepositions. The second section required students to choose one preposition and use it as many times as they could throughout a short story. The third section required students to make a poem by starting each line with a preposition and ending with an object of the preposition. This assignment had a nice creative twist to something that is normally viewed as dry. Students added color and their own flavor of art to make their prepositions come alive.
To encourage creativity and aid in the comprehension of text, literature circles can help keep students on track and responsible when reading a story. The Detective Notebook was created for the students to work together in partners as they read through the mystery novel. The students worked in partners and created summaries, answered 20 questions, illustrated a scene, defined words, and listed examples of figurative language. Students were given five chapters at a time to read independently and then answer the set of questions for that section. Students practiced working with partners, comprehension, and applying their knowledge of the novel.
Close and Critical Readings are chosen by the district and used throughout the course of the students’ careers at UCS. CCRs require the students to summarize the text, identify genre and author’s craft, identify theme, and then apply that theme to the real world. CCRs can be completed individually or in groups and considering much of the content of the texts were way over 7th graders’ heads, working in groups proved to be most successful. After reading the text as a class, students were broken up into groups of four and each assigned one of the four CCR questions. Each student's question depended on the color poker chip they picked at random. This lesson assessed each student’s ability to answer a CCR question and work as a group. Full class discussion wrapped up the assignment so students could hear other groups’ answers.
Students usually view grammar as unnecessary and boring. After learning the definition of prepositions and spending some time locating them in sentences, students were assigned a Preposition Fun Packet consisting of three different sections. The first tested their knowledge of listing three different prepositions and then creating phrases with those prepositions. The second section required students to choose one preposition and use it as many times as they could throughout a short story. The third section required students to make a poem by starting each line with a preposition and ending with an object of the preposition. This assignment had a nice creative twist to something that is normally viewed as dry. Students added color and their own flavor of art to make their prepositions come alive.