A Reflection on Exploring the Foundations of ELA

Lesson planning requires the skills of knowing one’s students’ strengths and needs, as well as knowing what to teach, when to teach and how to teach it. Gaining insight from other teachers’ work can be valuable and edifying. The following shows an opportunity to compare, contrast and glean that insight from classmate’s lesson plans surrounding a big idea.

In comparison, our lessons all include what to teach, to whom and how. ELA Common Core State Standards (CCSS) remain at the core of the learning objectives. Differentiation supports for diverse learners and English Language Learners exist as do enrichment activities for students who require more rigor, as per the assignments directives. All of the lessons cater to elementary students and include resources to best suit this developmental stage. From a broader, more wide-ranging standpoint, all of the lessons, by and large, aim to teach these elementary students 21st century skills – communication, critical thinking, collaboration and creativity.

In contrast my lesson dealt with an entirely different scope of the big idea than the other two, which centered around time. One seemed to tackle time from a personal perspective empowering first grade students to begin to think critically about time. The other dealt with the influence of historical events and figures, in both the past and the lasting impression of they have on present day. Both big ideas traverse the content areas of both social studies and ELA quite effectively by including adaptable resources and engaging activities which lend to fostering critical thinking and reflection. My big idea crosses both content areas, however, from entirely different angle. Perseverance remains a concept within the students that the lesson plans and instruction hope to foster within the students, where understanding the concept of time and/or dealing with history empowers students to critically think about a concept outside of them.

I appreciated the way Taylor’s lesson implemented vocabulary acquisition across content areas. Our school’s psychologist recently evaluated a student for an Individualized Educational Plan (IEP), determining that lack of vocabulary was the major obstacle impeding his reading comprehension. Her strategies will prove useful as I plan instruction toward his new IEP goals. I also took note of her before and after reading questions to foster comprehension, critical thinking and reflection.

Additionally, Ellen offered up several strategies that I can incorporate into my practice. I plan to broaden strategies of teaching comprehension skills to include instruction about text features, illustrations, timelines, graphs, etc., more in my practice. So much of what I do centers around IEP goals, that I forget that these facets within educational resources are just as import as the text passages themselves. The creative way she included these valuable resources will help me in my endeavors to augment reading comprehension for my special education students. These strategies will benefit my students because they seem to bring an enlightening diversity to instruction that I have overlooked in the past. Though I always address things like a timeline or an illustration in a passage, Ellen’s strategy will help me foster deeper thinking using these tools. Additionally, Taylor’s strategies surrounding vocabulary will help me bolster the lifelong learning attitude toward this very essential literacy skill (Tincher, 2013).

Regarding differentiation, it remains a pillar for all education at every grade level. To not differentiate means that a teacher assumes that all students have the same aptitude and lean in the same way. This simply does not exist in any classroom anywhere. To not differentiate means that this teacher is demonstrating discrimination toward a certain population of his/her students. That said, though I exercise differentiation at varying levels every day I recognize that there is always room for improvement. The differentiation strategies offered up by Ellen and Taylor, like peer supports, targeted reading repetition, graphic organizers, etc, can all be used to varying degrees to enrich the way I differentiate instruction within my special education groups.

Some challenges that I foresee in implementing integrated studies for language arts and social studies include my getting caught up in the minutia of special education and not keeping laser focus on the concepts taught in this class. As a member of the special education department, I frequently get asked to deal with the schools’ behavior challenges, taking away from the time for appropriate lesson planning. Furthermore, though I teacher four subjects (reading, writing, math and social skills), social studies is not officially a content area under my influence. IEP goals are the beacon on which I advance most instruction and there are no social studies IEP goals. Regardless, this class has educated me that I had a narrow scope for my instruction and enlightened me how I can make necessary and powerful changes. Teaching across content areas is crucial for students to begin to think globally and critically at the same time. Metacognition will be fostered more fully when I can better implement instruction across content areas. Bloom’s taxonomy can only be achieved in the mind of a child if his/her instructor remains willing and able to instruct in such capacity. Now that I understand the importance of these concepts, it remains up to me to put them to practice.

References

Tincher, L. (2013). Exploring foundations of ELA. Module 5: A new vision part 5: Common core connection. Indianapolis, IN: American College of Education.