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UCLA Cent er X TEP UCLA Cent er X TEP

ELEMENTARY UNIT/ LESSON PLANNING COMMENTARY

Your Name: Jenna Fishoff
Date: 4/10/14
Unit/Lesson Title: Charlottes Web Chapter 10: An Explosion. Sequencing Events
Grade Level and Content Area: 3rd Grade Reading/Writing
Number of Students: 28
Total Amount of Time: 1 hour

1. Learning Goals/Standards: What concepts, essential questions or key skills will be your focus? What do
you want your students to know at the end of this unit/lesson?

Students will individually create an alternate, detailed, sequence of events for Chapter 10, including appropriate
characters and presenting problem and solution as they use a sequence of events graphic organizer.

2. Rationale: Why is this content important for your students to learn and how does it promote social justice?

Exposing my students to classic literature the complex themes and concepts within the text will promote social
justice by expanding their minds and their knowledge base, which in turn, will allow them to understand
different experiences more critically and compassionately as they they navigate through life.

3. Identifying and supporting language needs: What are the language demands of the unit/lesson? How do
you plan to support students in meeting their English language development needs (including academic
language)?

Students will need to demonstrate understanding of academic vocabulary: Sequence of events, problem,
solution, climax, pasture.

4. Accessing prior knowledge and building upon students backgrounds, interests and needs: How do
your choices of instructional strategies, materials and sequence of learning tasks connect with your students
backgrounds, interests, and needs?

I plan to open the lesson with a video clip of a very popular movie that the students have expressed their interest
in. I will also ask them to think of their favorite book and how the author gets them excited and encourages
them to keep reading. By connecting to their stated interests or recent experiences, I am able to build on these to
provide relevancy to my lesson and keep the students engaged.

5. Accommodations: What accommodations or support will you use for all students (including English
Language Learners and students with special educational needs, i.e. GATE students and students with IEPs)?
Explain how these features of your learning and assessment tasks will provide all students access to the
curriculum and allow them to demonstrate their learning.

Occasional choral reading will allow ELL to see and hear the text simultaneously and will help build fluency.
Students that are struggling will work with teacher during independent work to scaffold the task in more detail.
The teacher will model academic language and vocabulary words and require students repeat her words and use
the vocabulary in their narrative. Students who complete their work early will be allowed to offer assistance to
their peers or begin illustrating their story.

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6. Theory: Which theories support your unit/lesson plan? (explain the connections)

Using a thinking/flow map to chart the sequence of events in a story are great visual tools that engage students
in an effective way. They can be used to represent complex processes in a simplified manner, and can help
students identify various stages and sub-stages of an event.

During this lesson, I scaffold using a thinking/flow map to illustrate the sequence of events in Chapter 10. After
I scaffold this process, the students will be able to create their own alternate sequence of events for chapter 10,
using a blank flow map. Scaffolding will be essential for all students successful learning. The instructional
strategy, scaffolding, can fall under Vygotskys theory of the zone of proximal development (ZPD), which has
been defined as the distance between the actual developmental level as determined by independent problem
solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance, or
in collaboration with more capable peers (Vygotsky). Vygotsky believed that when a student is at the ZPD for
a particular task, providing the appropriate assistance will give the student enough of an improvement to
achieve the task on their own. Thus, if I scaffold these skills necessary for successful completion of the first
draft, the students will eventually master these skills and will be able to complete them again on their own,
without the scaffold.

I also applied student interests to build on interest and relevancy during my lesson as I open the lesson with a
video clip of a very popular movie that the students are very fond of. I will also ask them to think of their
favorite book and how the author gets them excited and encourages them to keep reading. Luis Moll supports
this idea of culturally relevant curriculum as he claims that incorporating students funds of knowledge into
lessons is imperative. Moll argues that if students can apply and see their own knowledge, interests, and
experiences being incorporated into the classroom, they are able to see that learning and knowledge is
meaningful.

The students will think-pair-share numerous times throughout the lesson as I ask them questions before, during,
and after we read the chapter in our text. This cooperative discussion strategy provides students time and
structure for thinking and it enables them to formulate individual ideas and share them with a classmate and
even the entire class. This can fall under sociocultural theory because learning is collaborative, teacher and
students are both involved in the learning process. Students participation in social interactions promotes
learning and deeper understanding of the concept being taught.


7. Reflection: (answer the following questions after the teaching of this unit/lesson) What do you feel was
successful in your lesson and why? If you could go back and teach this learning segment again to the same
group of students, what would you do differently in relation to planning, instruction, and assessment? How
could the changes improve the learning of students with different needs and characteristics?

**COMMENTARY IS REQUIRED FOR ALL UCLA ELEMENTARY FORMAL OBSERVATIONS **