Dr. t. lee
Grade 5 School Days Unit
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Unit Introduction
A pilot of this unit was conducted with Grade 4 students. The pilot unit provided useful information about how to better improve the unit when it was implemented with Grade 5 students which is the version contained in this portfolio.
It is important to note that the Grade 4 and Grade 5 student English Language Proficiency levels were identical even though they are using different levels of the Macmillan English World text and even though they are a full grade level apart according to the master schedule; it unclear how students were placed in the various levels beyond their age and expected grade – according to my co-teachers, no English Language Proficiency assessment was used to place students at the various levels.
Teachers must continue with instruction even when instructional resources are not made available to them. At the time of this unit development, teacher’s guides were not available to us and several students did not have the English World textbooks so this unit was developed to fill that instructional deficit.
The following improvements were made between the pilot unit and the unit included in this portfolio:
· Drafting instructions to students were changed to explicitly state that students may only use pencil when drafting and writing in their English books. This is because students are beginning writers and beginning writers make many errors that need correction; writing in pen leads to messy and illegible compositions that obscure the delineation between teacher/peer feedback and student text.
· Drafting instructions to students were also revised to explicitly state that students may not make additional revisions to their text after teachers provide them with individualized feedback; this is because several students in the pilot unit made changes to their sentences after teacher approval that resulted in syntactically incorrect sentence formation and multiple errors.
· The definitions of composition, draft, proofread, and revise, and edit were added because it was clear in the pilot unit that students had not been introduced to the steps of the writing process in either their Georgian or English language classes.
· Greater time was devoted to explaining the rubric because the pilot lesson indicated that students had no experience with rubric based assessments in either their Georgian or English language classes.
· A teacher modeling of the presentation introduction, middle, and conclusion was included so that students would have a better idea of what to practice at home. For many students, this unit was the first time that all students were expected to present original material in scholarly format instead of just listening to the same few students who usually volunteer participation recite material that their teacher assigned them to memorize.
· During revision sessions, the students were divided into two groups with those with limited English proficiency placed with the Georgian teacher so that instructions could be delivered to them bilingually – teachers decided the division of students prior to the class meeting and students were not made aware of their placement reasons in order to protect their self esteem; at other times during the unit students were grouped using other criteria such as interests and ability levels in order to facilitate mixed groups where students of varying levels could excel and learn from eachother.
o Lesson step directions were developed so that Georgian teachers could refer to them during the parallel teaching session because they were often confused about what activities they should do next due to the limited common planning time available to us resulting from TLG schedule changes.
o Having the detailed parallel teaching instructions displayed on the PowerPoint made the task easier – even though I had run through the activities during our one hour co-planning session, I did not need to stop and explain each step to the Georgian teacher because the instructions were visible to everyone; however, even with the timestamps, the Georgian teacher struggled with maintaining the pace of the lesson and keeping track of time.
· A final improvement between the pilot unit and instructional unit contained in this portfolio was that teachers explicitly modeled how to think about and ask questions related to a presentation.
Unit PowerPoint
Figure 65 contains the instructional PowerPoint for this lesson. Details about the instructional context are contained in the PowerPoint.
Click the box below to begin the PowerPoint.
Advance by clicking on the slides.
Figure 65. School Days Unit PowerPoint.
Teaching in Action
In the first portion of this unit, students practiced the English and Georgian words for various school supplies. Figure 66 contains an excerpt of my Georgian co-teacher and I team teaching to review the unit vocabulary with students.
Click the Play button to hear the file.
Figure 66. Audio file of team teaching School Days Unit vocabulary words.
After collaborating to complete a vocabulary word matching exercise (see the School Days Unit PowerPoint), students independently wrote sentences about their favorite school supplies and were provided with teacher comments (see Figures 67 and 68). The purpose of this assignment was to introduce students to writing in a low pressure setting along with ensuring that every student presented their work while following presentation rituals. Students learn at different rates, so this assignment was scaffolded to contain activities that would be challenging for beginning proficiency students as well as those that were more advanced. It is important to note that I had to continually emphasize that students could not use the sentence provided in the model as their own. Some students struggled with this because they were used to copying information from the board or parroting information that was taught instead of engaging in independent thought; this will change with time and attention to instructional design and delivery modes that emphasize individual creativity and independent thinking processes. While it is certainly expected that students may copy information from the board during guided practice or class composition lessons, this strategy should not be the sole method of teaching employed in the classroom.
Figure 67. In-class school supplies writing with teacher comments example A
Figure 68. In-class school supplies writing with teacher comments example B
Students then reviewed Georgian and English words for school activities and were introduced to the steps of the writing process (see School Days Unit PowerPoint). The students drafted a sentence about their favorite school activity and were provided with feedback made revisions until there were no spelling or grammatical errors (see Figures 69, 70).
Figure 69. In-class school activities draft with revisions example A.
Figure 70. In-class school activities draft with revisions example B.
After students revised their school activities sentences they put their work in a specific format based on a performance rubric. This marked the first time students had seen or used rubrics. In a parallel teaching session, students worked in class to draft compositions in a specified format based on the rubric (see Figures 71, 72).
Figure 71. Student draft of school activities composition in specified format example A.
Figure 72. Student draft of school activities composition in specified format example B.
Students then completed their final compositions (see Figures 73, 74, 75, 76). Final compositions were graded when they did their oral presentations; during oral presentations students fielded questions from the audience (see Figure 77). Following the presentations, students reflected about the performances they enjoyed the most (see Figures 78, 79).Throughout the unit, students at various performance levels were provided with detailed comments for improving their work.
Figure 73. School activities final composition Level 4 performance.
Figure 74. School activities final composition Level 4 performance.
Figure 75. School activities final composition Level 3 performance.
Figure 76. School activities final composition Level 2 performance.
Click the Play button to hear the file.
Figure 77. Audio file of student presentation of their school activities final composition.
Figure 78. Student reflection about their classmates’ performance example A.
Figure 79. Student reflection about their classmates’ performance example B.
Finally, student work was displayed on a makeshift learning bulletin board (see Figure 80) and students completed a gallery walk to review the work of their peers (see Figure 81).
Figure 80. Picture of a bulletin board displaying students’ final compositions.
Figure 81. Students completed a gallery walk to review the work of their peers.
Connections to my Teaching Philosophy
This unit incorporates components 1-7 of my Teaching Philosophy. The team taught English and Georgian vocabulary lessons included in the unit were fun for me as well as the students. At the start of each lesson students were visibly engaged as they began to see the connections between their language and the new English words. For many students this process accelerated their comprehension levels.
This unit made extensive use of individualized feedback that helped students to revise their compositions and build their writing skills. In addition the structure of the lessons made the expected activities of each session clear to students at the onset. In this unit students dialogued not only with the teacher about improving their writing performance but with one another during the scholarly presentation rituals which required that students not only present but field questions from the audience about their presentation – this type of activity builds students’ higher order thinking skills. This unit also marked the first time that students completed a teacher survey; it was explained to students that the survey and the opportunity to comment about the lessons gives them and me an opportunity to reflect and think about what we have learned and make improvements in the future. Prior to this unit, no English student work was displayed in the classroom. The students were very proud to see their work on display.
Assessment of Student Learning
Review of unit vocabulary in Georgian and English excited students about the unit (see Figure 66). During drafting sessions, my co-teacher and I provided instant feedback to students so that they could revise their sentences to meet the course standards.
Examples of my feedback to students are provided in the graded assessments of the culminating projects (see Figures 73, 74, 75, 76). Also included are informal assignments of the drafting process in action so that the reader can see the teacher feedback that was provided during drafting sessions (see Figures 69, 70). Students then revised their work to present their compositions in a specific format (see Figures 71, 72). The type of feedback provided during the drafting process represents direct, individualized instruction in grammar and syntax development. Students were placed in a specific presentation order wherein each successive presenter was guided through the process of posing a question to their peer. Students were expected to demonstrate active listening skills and were redirected when they posed questions that the presenter had already asked (see Figure 77). In future lessons, the teacher would conduct a more in-depth lesson on questioning strategies and format prior to the date of the presentations. The final step of the presentations lesson was student reflections about their favorite presentation. This step involves metacognitive development that is essential for scholarship (see Figures 78, 79).
This unit was a success because 100% of the students in both the Grade 4 pilot unit and Grade 5 instructional unit performed their school supplies sentences with excellent oral proficiency. In addition, of the students who completed the school activities culminating task, 80% of Grade 4 students scored at proficient or advanced levels and 85% of Grade 5 students scored at proficient or advanced levels (see Figure 80).
It is important that in addition to the feedback a holistic rubric provides, teachers make verbal and written comments to students that help enhance their learning. This is why students at all levels, from proficient and advanced to basic and below basic receive detailed written and oral comments from me. For one student who performed at advanced levels I wrote: “You did an excellent job incorporating all of the drafting feedback. I am proud of your final composition.” This comment honors the student’s commitment to scholarly habits by acknowledging that she did an excellent job revising her work to meet the standards of the course. In the instance of a student performing at basic proficiency level the following notes were provided about his presentation: “Practicing at home will help” and about his composition: “These sentences were not the ones approved during the revising session. In the future, pay closer attention to the models and teacher feedback. You’re almost there!” These specific comments direct the student performing at basic level to the precise actions they must take in the future to improve their progress towards meeting the course expectations.
Assessment of Teaching
Student surveys were administered so that the students could provide their assessment of my teaching. These surveys were the first that the students had ever been asked to take. A survey was also provided to my co-teacher to solicit their input about my teaching.
Student Feedback
Figure 82 contains examples of completed student surveys for the School Days Unit. Qualitative data from the surveys included the following comments: “presenting our work is so cool. I liked this. The lessons are very fun,” and “The presentations were excellent. I like them very much. It was interesting.” The students unanimously enjoyed practicing new words in Georgian and English (see Figure 83); this survey results along with feedback from other classes regarding similar activities indicates a strong student preference for dual language development instructional design. For the school supplies portion of the unit, the students least enjoyed the matching activity (see Figure 84). This indicates student readiness to write and present. For the school activities portion of the unit, students thought that displaying their work in the classroom was the coolest part of the lesson (see Figure 85). This has important instructional implications. Students will perform more readily and with increased excitement if instructional bulletin boards that display and celebrate their scholarship are implemented on a more systematic basis.
Figure 82. Examples of completed student surveys for the School Days Unit.
Figure 83. “I enjoyed practicing the Georgian and English vocabulary words for school supplies and school activities” – grade 5 School Days Unit student survey
Figure 84. Student rankings of the school supplies lesson instructional events.
Figure 85. Student rankings of the school activities lesson instructional events.
Co-Teacher Feedback
Figure 86 is the completed School Days Unit co-teacher survey. My co-teacher strongly agreed that teacher modeling of the lesson components and usage of the scholarly presentation rituals was beneficial for students. My co-teacher made the following qualitative feedback on the School Days Unit survey: “I’ve learnt much from you! I liked the presentation rituals.” The appreciation of establishing an appropriate instructional environment that facilitates learning is important.
Figure 86. Co-teacher survey for the School Days Unit.
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