Website Analysis and Reflection Essay As this assignment began to take shape, I began to think about the ways

that I could encourage my students to get excited about reading. Previously, my students have shown great disdain for any reading assignment that I have given. They grumble, they moan, they complain, and they avoid. The reaction of avoidance is even more pronounced in my special education classes. My students have severe emotional challenges and these challenges have made their reading educational journey either a bumpy ride or a non existent trip altogether. Many of these students will only read social media updates on their electronic devices. In order for me to get the students excited about the assignment, I had to add a twist to it. By putting the assignment components on the website, and incorporating a group activity and a current event discussion, I expect the students to be intrigued enough to want to complete the assignment, even with the reading that is involved.

The idea for the lesson was taken from a Common Core Curriculum Map book I purchased at the beginning of the school year. For the 10th grade class, this school year the study is on World Literature. Since September, the 10th grade class has studied Latin American, African, and Asian authors. The final unit of the year is the longest. This unit studies Russian authors. It was quite timely with the new tensions between United States and Russia. With this lesson, I can encourage my students to learn about another culture, begin to develop a sense of cultural importance in literature, and become more aware of the events that are happening around them today.

I have maintained this website since the beginning of the school year. I have included the most important updates; I keep the information current, and post all of the important information regarding assignments, projects, due dates, and expectations. All parents were given the website address at the beginning of the school year. They are able to check the site whenever to see what their students should be working on. They are also able to reach out to me to ask any questions. My co-workers and fellow teachers and therapists are also able to access my site to get any make up work their students may need for missing days. My website has been used as a standard for other teachers in the building to begin building their own sites.

The idea for this lesson was simple; expose these students to a world outside of their neighborhoods and get them thinking about how their lives can have a more global impact. In order for the students to have a working knowledge of the current events, I needed to give them a background. I needed to plunge them into Russian culture and literature. I needed to give them a few points of reference for them to begin to build an opinion on the current events. I believed that by having them study 2 of Russias most prolific writers and have them read and compare two very different stories that offer them two very different views of social norms and cultural habits, they would be able to begin to formulate opinions of the country. In addition to Internet based research, the students would be able to share their thoughts in small groups and in larger class discussions. My hope is that they will begin to develop their opinions further and then use those opinions and their newly acquired background knowledge to formulate an opinion on the current events.

As I created all of the steps for this assignment, and I began to think of the many ways I need to garner excitement with my special students, I realized that I could make this entire unit about studying a different culture and encouraging them to form opinions about current events. According to Professor Shepherd in his article, The Probe Method: A Constructivist Instructional Strategy, I am using the constructivist method of teaching. I am giving my students a starting point, and I am asking them to build their own opinions about a culture they dont know anything about, then, take what they have learned about the culture and form another opinion about a current event. By completing this unit of study, I am encouraging my students, students who probably would never learn about Russia or even care about a possible rift in American and Russian relations, to form opinions and have meaningful conversations with each other about how they feel. The possibility of having these conversations with my students was the driving force behind the creation of this lesson. It has been inspiring to watch my students go from complaining about reading a story written by a non-American, to watching them make predictions, be eager to see what happen next, and then learn something new about the culture and relate it to their own culture. Even with the varied reading levels and learning abilities in each class, studying short stories from other cultures has been successful with this class. The excitement of watching them take this new information and apply it to a current event is almost too much to handle. As of the writing of this reflection, I have already gotten almost a third of the way through the first part. I have just finished reading and listening to the story The Nose, by Nikolai Gogol, with my 10th graders. They are currently completing the

comprehension assessments. They are doing better with the questions then I could have ever imagined. Since we began this unit, my students grades have all improved to where all but 3 or 4 students are now passing.

References Carmicheal, S. B. (2012). Common core curriculum maps English Language Arts. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Shepherd, N. (2010). The probe method: A constructivist instructional strategy. Meridian, 13(1), 4.