Mary Brennan

Intro to ELL - Fall 2016

SIOP Lesson Reflection
For our SIOP lesson, we had both a content objective and a language objective. Our
content objective was to have our student (Taralyn) be able to describe and familiarize herself
with the influence that vegetation has on water runoffs effects on an aquatic ecosystem. Our
language objective aimed to have her use higher level thinking by having her write a summary
on how vegetation influences the effect of water runoff on an ecosystem while using the learned
vocabulary.
In order for Taralyn to accomplish our content objective, we constructed a powerpoint
that highlighted the 6 vocabulary terms we wanted her to learn. Our prior knowledge assessment
revealed that Taralyn was familiar with all of the vocabulary words we were introducing;
however, the connections that we wanted her to make regarding the words with the lesson were
relatively new To emphasize and reinforce the concepts and vocabulary, we had her watch a
video, complete a graphic organizer, and partake in a virtual lab about the influence of vegetation
on water runoff effects. We found that Taralyn performed very well as she was able to have an
active discussion with us about the concepts as she progressed through the lesson.
We also used these activities to prepare Taralyn to achieve our language objective, which
was to summarize the lesson using the key vocabulary. When completing this activity, she
showed a little hesitation about the acceptability of how she was planning on using the key
vocabulary, but was able to complete the assessment with ease and eloquence. Thus, once again
confirming her achievement of both our content and language objectives.
Because Taralyn was familiar with most of the words we introduced, learning the
vocabulary wasnt as challenging as it could have been for an ELL. As a result, I found that our
lesson shifted a bit to place more emphasis on teaching her the connections between the words

instead of the meaning of the words themselves. The part of our lesson that I thought added the
challenge component for Taralyn was the completion of the virtual lab and the graphic organizer
because they required her to not only identify the vocabulary, but also discuss relationships
between the words, which were somewhat new to her.
While I do not believe any parts of our lesson was overtly challenging for Taralyn to
complete, I think that some of the activities may be difficult for an ELL to perform as well on. If
we were to redo this lesson, I believe that it would be beneficial to reduce the amount of writing
required for the graphic organizer because it might be overwhelming particularly for a new ELL.
I think that the inclusion of the lab and video would be successful strategies for an ELL because
they allow for better immersion in the concept and were great for demonstrating relationships
and effects. However, I think that incorporating modeling and asking more questions to gauge
comprehension would be more beneficial for an ELL in preparation to completing the language
objective.