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.