Ms. Clark, After watching your lesson I have some feedback for you.

First, I would like to commend you on your efforts to connect the lesson to your students backgrounds. I believe that having them discuss what they already know and also asking your ESL students about volcanoes from their native countries helped them to make connections to previous experiences and learning. I also would like to acknowledge that your content objective was written, read, and talked about with your students. You also made sure to align all of your learning activities with the content objective. In addition to making your content objective align, you made sure to add supplementary materials and meaningful activities to help students understand the content concept. You also did a great job emphasizing the key vocabulary by introducing them, explaining them, and having students use them. Also, you were very explicit about what you expected the students to do during the lesson. All of these features were done well and I encourage to keep doing what you are doing. In addition, there is always room for improvement. Some goals I have for you is first to add a language objective. In your lesson I saw that you used the language skills so it should be pretty easy to connect the content objective to language skills and create a language objective. By doing this, you will also be able to align your activities to both content and languages objectives. Also, when choosing a content concept it is important to make sure that the concept is appropriate for the grade level. You can do this by following the Common Core Standards. The standards for 6th grade will give you the content you need to cover and can also help you come up with a content objective. Also, if you are having students read alone it is helpful to differentiate the books by giving students leveled text. I would also encourage you to have students use more techniques in the lesson. In this lesson you had them making predictions, which they already know how to do, but maybe you could challenge them a bit more by introducing them to the scientific method and teach them how to use it. Another aspect that will help students is allowing them to interact more with each other. For example, instead of having one or two students give the answer to a question have students share with a buddy and that way everyone gets a chance to speak and you can give feedback to multiple students. You can also have them work together as they become more comfortable with the content. In addition, I would love to see the bilingual aid help clarify words to ESL students in their native language. You can also give students the key vocabulary in both languages. Also, you might want to put less into a lesson in order for the students to really develop the skills necessary to understand the content at a deeper level. In addition, t is important to give your ESL student sufficient wait time to digest what is being said and asked. Give them time to understand what the question is and time to come up with an answer. Finally, make sure that you are using formative assessments throughout the lesson to make sure students are getting the content before moving on. Also, make sure to have a summative assessment that is aligned with the objectives so that you are able to assess whether or not the students met the objective. I believe that if you apply these features to your lesson your teaching will be effective to all students. Sincerely, Camille Osness

!"#$%%&'()*&))' ELED 4440 Final 1. How would you respond to a teacher who says, Well, if I follow the SIOP Model and make sure my English learners are able to access content using these activities, techniques, and approaches, my on-level kids and native English speakers will be bored. Although the SIOP Model was developed as a way to help ESL students be successful in the classroom, the features can be used to help all students in the classroom succeed. For example, connecting content to students background will help all students to make connections to previous learning and to remember what was taught. In addition, hands-on activities and materials will be beneficial to all students by helping make abstract content more concrete. Also, allowing interactions and grouping configurations can engage all students in discussions and activities instead of just a few. Teachers who only have few ESL students can and should use most of these features, which will help engage all students. Then, make specific modifications like clarifying in their native language and allowing wait time. In the same way, teachers can make modifications by asking a variety of questions (including higher-level). SIOP also helps a teacher to align the entire lesson and assessments with the content an language objectives that should come from the Common Core. Therefore, the lessons content is appropriate for al students and the features just help to clarify and reinforce understanding for all students throughout the lesson. 2. A factual question a teacher might ask based on social studies text: Who was the first president of the United States? Given the topic of the presidency, what are several additional questions you could ask that promote higher-order thinking? List

three. Why is it important to use a variety of questioning strategies with English learners? Tell your neighbor what makes a good president. Discuss with your group whether or not a president should make it a priority to be liked. If you were the President right now, what would you change? Would you anything stay the way the same? Write about it in your journal. When a teacher asks questions it is important that he/she make those questions engaging by allowing all students to participate in giving an answer. It is also important to give a variety of questions because students (especially ESLs) are on different levels. A teacher does not always want to have questions that are too hard for ESLs but ESLs also need to be challenged. Therefore, there needs to be a balance and a variety of questions so that ESL students can be successful and challenged without getting frustrated. Blooms Taxonomy provides a variety of question types ranging in difficulty, which can be a great resource as long as teachers make them engaging. 3. Compare and contrast the following teachers approaches to teaching a lesson on nutrition. Which approach to teaching this content concept is most appropriate for English learners? How do you know? According to the SIOP Model, which was created for ESL students, scenario B would be most appropriate for ELs. Instead of lecturing, this teacher uses supplementary materials and meaningful activities for students to make connections and personalize the nutrition content they are learning. The scenario also allows for students to interact at the end and discuss their understanding. There are also hands-on activities and manipulatives, like the food plate, that allow for students to take abstract ideas and help

make them concrete. In addition, the activities provide ways for students to make connections with past experiences and learning in order to better remember what is being taught. 4. How does a teacher determine whether a majority of students, including English learners, are engage throughout the period? What techniques could be used to sustain engagement throughout the period? What should the teacher do if he or she senses that students are of task? Why is sustained engagement so critical to English learners academic progress? If students are participating they are engaged, if they are on task they are most likely engaged, if they look like they are paying attention they are probably engaged. However, the biggest indicator is participation. So in order to make sure students are engaged, all students need to be participating. Asking engaging questions, having meaningful activities, and making connections to previous experiences and learning can do this. If students are having a hard time being engaged it might be because they are having a hard time understanding the concept or they are bored. Teachers should limit their output as much as possibly making it explicit and clear so that all students are able to understand. Also, teachers need to allow for wait time so that ELs have a chance to be engaged. ELs need to be engaged the whole time in order to fully understand the concepts being taught. This is because they have to work twice as hard to understand, due to the language barrier. Think of a content concept that you might be teaching. Describe three different grouping configurations that could be used for teaching and learning this concept. How would you organize the members of each group? How would you monitor

student learning? What would you want students to do while working in their groups? How would the grouping configurations facilitate learning for ELs? A content concept that I will be teaching is the Civil War. One grouping configuration I would use is a group of four or five students of varying levels who would each have an assigned job. The group would then go on a learning walk (which is different for each group) and look at primary source documents to see what they can learn. After, they would discuss with their group what all they learned. Then the groups would be divided into different groups again (also varying levels) where each person would share about their experience and what they learned. If the ESL students can speak in English and get their thoughts across, I would have them talk by themselves if not, I would pair them with another student. Finally, I would divide the class into levels and give them a leveled text to take turns reading as a group If I have enough ESLs I might put them in a group of their own and depending on their level have them read either in English or their native language. Arranging the ELs this way will help them to be a part of each group at their ability level. Also, because each person has a job I would have students fill out a form saying whether or not all group members participated, that way there is accountability.