Lesli has a blog

Lesson planning can seem daunting at times.  I find that once I get started, I get into the flow of planning and I don't struggle so much.  But that getting started is tough!  I have surfed the internet for countless hours hoping to be inspired by something I could use in my own classroom.  I have wasted many hours "researching" tried and true methods for engaging students.  I was relieved to receive a checklist in class tonight that would help evaluate the instructional material that I find.  For my observation lesson, I will be coming into a class that is 3/4 of the way through the novel, That was then, this is now by S.E. Hinton.  I will be teaching on chapter 8.  I really struggled finding a way to include a reading strategy, thinking map, and an activity into this one lesson.  This is what I have come up with.  In this coming of age novel, many important events occur that influence a desire to change in the main character....

I am a big fan of thinking maps.  I think that any time you can create a visual representation of your content material, you can reach more students.  Thinking maps serve many purposes far beyond the visual representation though.  It's a way tool to use for your struggling learners as well because thinking maps carefully walk you through understanding the material.  They are great resources to come back should your student need a guide or a reminder throughout the units as well. My favorite thinking map is the Bubble Map. As an future English teacher, I can see many benefits to using this thinking map in my classroom.  It can be used to describe the characteristics of a character from a novel that we are reading.  It can also expand to include higher thinking questioning like identifying the perspectives of different characters in the book and how their perceptions affect the main character. Another way you could use the Bubble Map is by assi...

Tonight, I learned about new techniques that I can use as reading strategies in my classroom.  The RAFT method was new for me and it took me a bit to understand how it worked.  I like that it gives students options that they can choose from for writing assignments.  I think when students are given a choice, they perform with high success rates because they were allowed the freedom to make it their own.  With the RAFT method, students may try out several different options before finding the one that best suits them and that's great too!  I think that I could use this method when discussing point of view or character analysis, too. The method that I can see using the most in my classroom would be the Anticipatory Guide.  I have used this method before when introducing a novel.  I was able to ask questions and lead class discussions on topics that would be later discovered throughout the book.  The book I chose was The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas....

Tonight, we began our journey in Education 338.  We learned more about three strategies (jigsaw, Friar Model, and the Choice Model) that we can use in our own classrooms to help students with the comprehension of reading material. Of the three strategies, the jigsaw activity stands out most to me as an effective tool to use with my students. The jigsaw method allows students to work in cooperative learning groups to complete close reading tasks.  This methods allows small groups to tackle smaller reading portions of complex texts.  Students work together within their groups to come up with ways to retell, summarize, and synthesize the material.  They are then able to share with the class their results.  To me, this relieves a lot of pressure students face with reading and comprehending large complex text.  This method breaks down the process for each student and has them focus on smaller portions at a time.  I work with at-risk students who lose focu...