Brittany Robertson 11/8/12 TPA Task 2: Instruction Commentary 1.

In the instruction seen in the clip(s), describe strategies you used to engage students in learning tasks to develop skills and strategies to comprehend or compose text. a. Cite examples of strategies aimed at engaging all your students and examples aimed at engaging specific individuals or subgroups. If you described any of these fully in the lesson plans or the planning commentary, just reference the relevant description. To engage all of my students during my lesson, I did a few specific things. The first thing I did was during the I Do part of the lesson. I had an example subtraction word problem and I used the names of the teachers in our classrooms for the word problem. The students were excited to hear names of people they actually knew. I involved my students when I asked them to raise their hands if they saw some clue words. This helped me check for their understanding. I also used a strategy that my mentor taught me, which is Ratio, but specifically call-and-response. I would stop in mid-sentence and have students finish what I was about to say. For example, during the I Do, when we were counting back I said, I have 7. I need to count back 6 and see how many I have left. Watch me as I do it. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Im left with and students finished my sentence with 1! The volume of the students responses gives me a way to gauge whether all my students are with me, or if only a few students are actually paying attention. I am also able to tell whether they understand by what they say to complete the sentence. Another example of that was when I said, Remember, my story problems always have a and my students finished with, LABEL. I look surprised in the video, and I was, because I hadnt intended for them to respond to that, however, I was extremely happy because it showed me they were with me and understood what I was saying! To engage individuals in the group, during the We Do, I used our individual incentives system. The little boy who answered my first question correctly received a Star Ticket. Those tickets the collected at the end of every day and are entered in a raffle for a piece of candy. Another way I engaged specific students was by allowing them to come up and write on the Promethean board in ActivInspire. One of my students got to come up and underline the clue words. I intentionally called on students who typically struggle with math, so that I could get an idea of whether or not they understood.

b. How did these strategies reflect students academic or language development, social/emotional development, or cultural and lived experiences? I have noticed that by personalizing the examples I use in my classroom, the students have more buy-in to what we are doing. They are more motivated when I personalize what we are doing, as well. This helps me build relationships with them, which just creates a better classroom community in general. The call-and-response teaching was something that I saw my mentor model for me, but I also learned about it in my Culturally Relevant Curriculum course, with Dr. Ruth Myers-Vassell. We read an article in her class, called Preacher-Style, and it showed that African American students are responsive to call-and-response. I have found it to be extremely effective in our classroom. Using extrinsic rewards is something that I do not use for every lesson, but I try to use about one lesson per day. I noticed that since math comes after recess and the students are extremely energetic and unfocused on school at this time, using the tickets helps refocus their attention and it encourages participation during important components of the lesson. 2. Cite examples of language supports seen in the clip(s) to help your students understand that content and/or participate in literacy discourse central to the lesson. a. How did these strategies reflect students varying language proficiencies and promote their language development? In the I Do portion of the video, I used an anchor chart to emphasize the key vocabulary and points of the lesson. I provided clue words that students should be looking for in subtraction word problems. I also have up the steps for solving a word problem. These anchor charts were up throughout the lesson, and I constantly encouraged the students to look back at them to guide their thinking through the process of solving word problems. For example, in the video, I modeled my thinking through a word problem, and during the modeling, I referred to the anchor chart. During the We Do, when my student who came to the board underlined the right clue words, I reminded my students that she knew that because she used the anchor chart. Another example of language supports that was shown was when I restated to the whole group what an individual student said. Sometimes, students speak so quietly that not everyone can hear them. For example, the first student I called on during the We Do was very soft-spoken. I repeated what he said to the whole class, so that they would hear it again (or for the first time.)

Another language support I used was reading aloud the problems to the entire group during the You Do portion. I made that instructional decision, because even in second grade, we have two students who are emergent readers. To accommodate those students and expedite the learning process, I decided to read aloud the You Do problems to the whole class. I also posted the problems during the We Do and You Do on the Promethean board in big print for all the students to read with me. 3. Describe strategies for eliciting student thinking and how your ongoing responses further their learning. Cite examples from the clip(s). One strategy I used for eliciting student thinking was by using questions that were a higher level on the Blooms Taxonomy than just remembering. I had students applying their knowledge of the steps for word problems. I asked individual students to complete the next steps as we did the We Do. I also had one student at the evaluating level. When given the subtraction problem 17-8, I asked the students how they could do that because we dont have 17 fingers to start on for counting back. The first student who answered gave me a surface level answer. He said, Just count back 8 from 17. So, I said, Yeah, but how will I know when Ive counted back 8? Then another student raised her hand and shared that she would put 17 in her head, and count back, but she would put up a finger for every number she counted back and she would stop counting when she had up 8 fingers. That answer required her to evaluate what the previous student had said. 4. Reflection a. Reflect on students learning of concepts and academic language as featured in the video clip(s). Identify both successes and missed opportunities for monitoring all students learning and for building their own understanding of skills and strategies for comprehending and/or composing text. Looking back over the video, I feel like I did have successes. I think that my steps on the anchor chart were clear enough that the students were able to carry over the steps we went through in the I Do. They were then able to apply them in the story problems that we did as a group, and eventually on their own on the independent word problems worksheet. One missed opportunity for monitoring all students learning was during the We Do. The students were raising their hands and coming up to write on the Promethean board, but the other students were just watching and sitting at their desks. b. If you could do it over, what might you have done to take advantage of missed opportunities or to improve the learning of students with diverse learning needs and characteristics?

I could have had the students writing down how they solved each of the We Do problems, so that I could circulate and see which students understood the problems. I also could have done a quick thumbs up/down after doing problems together during the We Do to see which students were ready to move on and which ones would need a little more guided practice before the independent portion.