Resource Evaluation Reflection

Through the class Literacy in Middle and High School we were assigned to work on a Resource Evaluation of a resource that we plan to use in our unit. For my unit, I plan to require my students to read The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank due to its relation to the Holocaust, its readability, and the ability for students to form connections due to their similarities in age with Anne Frank. The purpose of the resource evaluation was for us, as educators, to examine our resource through the eyes and minds of our students. Our students come from varying reading levels so it is important to ensure that the texts we ask students to read are informative and easily comprehendible while remaining an approrpiate challenge for students.

The completion of the resource evaluation fits with performance criterion 7.1: candidates plan instruction by drawing upon knowledge of content areas to meet rigorous learning goals. Since I will use The Diary of  a Young Girl in conjunction with instruction about World War II and the Holocaust, I will use Anne Frank's diary and other readings to engage students and teach them about the topic through personal narratives while also meeting the standards I chose for my unit. The resource evaluation also fits with performance criterion 8.1: candidates use a variety of instructional strategies to make the discipline accessible for diverse learners because I will plan a multitude of opportunities for students to interact with the text in order to learn the information and central concepts surrounding the book and those that relate to the broader objectives of the unit. 

The aspects of reading and texts that will be most important for me to evaluate when reading and assigning reading to students would be the readability and whether or not they have the background knowledge to understand the text fully. First and foremost, students should be challenged with their assignments, but it is also necessary to ensure that they are able to retrieve the information that is essential to their learning of the discipline. It will also be crucial that I survey students to determine the background knowledge that they possess prior to beginning a unit, providing them with any necessary background knowledge that they may not have, and clearing up any misconceptions about the topic we are discussing. 

The main thing that I have learned about supporting all students to learn from disciplinary texts is that all students do not learn the same way because they are not all at the same level. In my future classroom I will have students at varying reading levels, therefore, it will be necessary for me, as their teacher, to determine what texts are approrpiate for each student regarding the readability and level of challenge of the texts and assign readings accordingly. So long as students are getting the necessary information to achieve proficiency, I am more than happy to differentiate materials to ensure student learning.

Mini Lesson Reflection

On Tuesday, November 8th, and Thursday, November 10th, each student in 343/361 had the opportunity to teach two twenty minute lessons back to back. This was a great experience that took a lot of planning. A folder of documents can be seen here and include my lesson plan, documents for my activities and assessments, my agenda for both days, and the feedback documents from both my peers/students and professors. 

This experience of planning and implementing two back to back lessons aligns with the Performance Criterion 6.1, candidates implement multiple methods of assessment to monitor learner progress to  inform instructional practice, and Performance Criterion 7.1, candidates plan instruction by drawing upon knowledge of content areas to meet rigorous learning goals. Due to the class size only being four people, it was very easy to assess the students multiple times and multiple ways. At the end of Tuesday's class I had them hand in an exit slip which involved them writing down questions they still had and something that they learned from the lesson. On Thursday's class I had the opportunity to personally communicate with each student in regards to the activity they did, as well as I had them answer a short essay response question. To meet performance criterion 7.1, I used my interest in World War II combined with one of the standards I chose for my unit, College, Career & Civic Life C3 Framework for Social Studies State Standards: D2.His.3.6-8., to create a lesson centered around responsibility and the Holocaust.

This back to back teaching opportunity was not my first experience with teaching back to back because, a few weeks ago, I had the same opportunity at my placement. During my placement lessons, I was also given the chance to teach the same lesson in two morning Social Studies mods. During that experience, I learned to modify from one mod to another because, as can be expected, the first mod did not go as planned. During the back to back lessons in 343/361, I learned more about modifying from one day to another and I look forward to learning how to better modify for multiple class mods who may, or may not, be moving at the same pace.

In regards to modifications from Tuesday's lesson to Thursday's lesson, I used the exit slips that students turned in on Tuesday and created a review sheet for them. The reason I did this was primarily because the lesson I chose to teach would be placed towards the end of the fourth week of the unit I designed, therefore, it will be important for students to have the background knowledge of everything we discussed up to that point to apply in developing their ideas about responsibility and the Holocaust. Considering the fact that we only had forty minutes over two days to teach this lesson, I felt the quickest way would be to create a review sheet for students to review rather than spending a day of class reviewing. In a future classroom, with more time, I would plan time for review during class with the review sheet as a take home supplement.

My final assessment involved a short answer essay of the prompt: How did the person/people you assigned the most blame to affect the way the Holocaust is perceived as historically significant? How would the Holocaust change if that person/group of people was not involved? This is a variation of the focusing questions which can be seen on my lesson plan. It also allows the students to form their own opinion about responsibility and blame, considering they are often subjective ideas. Since students also had to use information from the unit to justify their responses, they had the opportunity to demonstrate their learning as well.

The activity that I chose to have the students complete was very engaging for students, so I believe that it will be a great activity for my future classroom if/when I teach this unit. While I have always enjoyed and appreciated having agendas in my classes, I discovered just how helpful they are for teachers as well. Having an agenda helped to keep me aware of time and ensured that I did not run over my allotted time. The use of the agenda also allowed students to know what would be happening during class and what expectations I had.

The main revision that I would make to this lesson plan for my final unit would be to include more time for students to work on the activity and, with a larger class, more time for discussion. I am designing my unit around 90 minute class periods, so I feel as though time may be less of an issue.

One thing I would like to focus on as I move towards and during student teaching would be internal confidence. This process of creating and teaching back to back lessons has shown me that I am extremely capable of teaching and being successful. However, I have a tendency to believe that I will fail and/or the lesson will go horribly and/or I will not know enough about the given subject to teach my students effectively. I have learned, during student teaching, that failing is okay because there will be another teacher in the room to step in when necessary, that every lesson is a learning opportunity and as long as students learn it does not matter if you make a fool of yourself, and that whenever I feel that I know less about a subject than I should, that means I need to study and read more about it. I believe that by working diligently on improving myself a little bit each and every day, that this goal is more than attainable.

Graphic Novels as a Teaching Tool

This semester the Saint Michael's College Education Department chose the graphic novel El Deafo by CeCe Bell as our department common read. El Deafo is about a young girl who becomes deaf at a four years old. The story follows her through her adolescent years which include complicated friendships, learning difficulties due to her hearing impairment, and eventually interest in boys. Keeping with Saint Michael's College tradition, the department hosted four separate events that were centered around the book. The event I attended was on October 24th and was a panel titled "Let's Get Graphic: An Introduction to Cartooning & Graphic Novels."

The panel included three cartoonists from the Center for Cartoon Studies and a teacher from Hunt Middle School. The panel spent a large portion of time discussing comic creation. They discussed that cartoonists rely on bravery to create and publish their comics, which is a quality we desire our students to develop. Another important aspect is that there is an entire comic reading community on the internet that essentially only cartoonist's and comic enthusiasts know about. Although students should never be encouraged to talk to strangers, students are able to see that they are not "different" for liking comics - in fact there is a whole comic loving world out there that they don't know about! Lastly, diversity is the key to comics. However, with diversity comes the responsibility of ensuring that the story is correct. This could mean collaborating with somebody more knowledgeable than the cartoonist to create an accurate storyline.

The performance criterion that this aligns most closely with is Performance Criterion 8.1: Candidates use a variety of instructional strategies to make the discipline accessible for diverse learners. This shows through the ways in which graphic novels can be incorporated in the classroom which I will discuss below. It also aligns with Performance Criterion 10.1: Candidates are prepared to collaborate with learners, families, colleagues, other school professionals, and community members to ensure student learning because some students may need to read graphic novels as a way of accommodating for a learning disability. 

The biggest takeaway I have from the event is that graphic novels are not cheating. Being raised in a generation where graphic novels were looked down upon by teachers and students were encouraged to read something with less pictures, I have most definitely conformed to the stigma that comic books are bad. However, that is clearly not the case and through reading El Deafo and attending the panel I have begun to see that.

First and foremost, graphic novels actually can be extremely difficult to read. They require reading in the gutter, or reading between the panels. Just as in a traditional text, authors cannot incorporate every individual detail or you would be reading the book forever. Graphic novels can, arguably, be more difficult to read between the lines, specifically if you are not a visual person. However, graphic novels, due to their illustrations are typically phenomenal options for English Language Learners, students on individual plains, and/or reluctant readers. English Language Learners often learn best through pictures, therefore, a book comprised primarily of illustrations with less wording is a great opportunity for students to learn about storylines and identifying language with pictures, but in a much different way than traditional flashcards. 

Lastly, many graphic novels include overarching lessons within them. For example, El Deafo was a true story that teaches students about empathy. The novel also teaches students that not everybody is the same and that is okay. Differences are not bad, they are something that should be embraced by all. Both students and teachers have a lot to gain from using graphic novels within the classroom; therefore, it is important that educators begin opening their minds, and their doors, to the option of teaching with graphic novels to enhance understanding within their content area.