TPE 4: Making Content Accessible
_Lesson Plan: Dictionary Skills
In a class where we routinely encourage students to look to the dictionary for spelling help, I knew we needed a dictionary skills lesson. This group of third graders are spread out on the spectrum of writing skills. We have some students who are still in the transitional spelling stage and who write repetitive short simple sentences. On the other end we have students who have excellent spelling and who easily write long stories with a beginning, middle and end. I wanted everyone to be engaged in the lesson, everyone from the writing wizards to the strugglers, and I used many techniques to make the content accessible to all. The students can use different learning modalities in the lesson. Step one, students put themselves in alphabetical order according to their first names. Then to increase the challenge, I gave each student a word on a flashcard and asked them to put themselves in alphabetical order according to that word. This way I engaged visual learners with written words, tactile learners by giving them cards, and kinesthetic learners by having them move about. In addition, I activated prior knowledge; the words I chose for the cards were all beach words to connect with the recent class field trip to the beach. Reflection - I was lucky enough to have my university supervisor observe this lesson and give comments. We saw eye to eye on the strengths and weaknesses of the lesson. Strengths Student Engagement - I worked hard to hook the students and keep them engaged and it was gratifying that everyone was with the program at some point. Flexibility - For this observation I was focusing on my use of instructional time. To my surprise, this lesson went very quickly and I found myself adding challenges that I had merely brainstormed during lesson planning. I asked them to guess which came first in the dictionary, "seal" or "sealion". The class was conflicted so I had them pair up look it up in the dictionary to prove it one way or the other. While I hadn't explicitly taught how to use a dictionary, the students with previous experience helped out those who were less sure. This information allowed the class to start developing a procedure for looking up words in the dictionary. Opportunities for Improvement Giving Clear Directions - This lesson was heavily teacher directed—more than I or my students are used to—so I had plenty of opportunities to practice giving instructions. Sometimes it went well and sometimes it didn't. For instance, while students were focused and on-task, I interrupted to give further instructions. To avoid such interruptions, I've been scripting and posting my instructions to make sure I frontload. Overall I think the lesson was successful and I'm glad I can see ways of making my next lesson better. |