David J Grathwohl Professor Hansen Tie 535 11 November, 2012 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. The strategies that I used in order to keep students engaged were, of course, jfactor and turn and talk. The j-factor, I felt had to be rich enough for students to want to listen to the scenario description that I had created for them. I also wanted to make the scenario as real world as possible. Even before I introduced this scenario, I asked that students really work on their imaginations. I had them close their eyes and imagine themselves thirty years later, married with children. I told them that they had just been fired from their job; they had no money or food in the house and rent was due. The next day they had gotten a call and were asked to take the position without even needing to interview. At this point, I immediately shouted youve got a job. Then I went on to shake hands with a couple of my students to really make them feel that they had earned a position. Then I gave students the complete run down of the job description with some controversial things where discussion could be rich, such as bad pay and terrible hours. The turn and talk almost works as a think-pair-share; students are thinking during the entire time that I am presenting the scenario, and the pairing allows them to talk to the whole table instead of just one partner, then the sharing occurs. I also used narration when I wanted students to know what to do and also give motivation to those who were on task and engaged. I like to think of narration as painting the picture. All students can hear what they need to do, but not all students are sure of how to go about doing it, therefore, painting the picture gives a better picture of what is to be done. b. How did these strategies reflect students academic or language development, social/emotional development, or cultural and lived experiences? I feel that these strategies are extremely important in a place where learning is rich. As narration comes into place students feel safe about what they are doing and are reassured of the right thing to do. All students need to experience interesting lessons

where they can relate to the material being presented; and all students know what it means to have a job or to disagree with rules and expectations. Since all students have been in a world where disagreements are frequent I chose to implement some hard to swallow information in the scenario, such as low pay and bad hours. I know that my students are stepping into the adolescent stage, where rebellion is the highlight of most activities. Therefore, I gave them some bait that could allow them to be rebellious and feel like standing up and saying no. I also knew that this scenario would be interesting because the strike had just occurred earlier in the year. 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? This activity allowed for students to practice disagreeing out loud with their table groups. In this lesson I pushed students to refer back to types of citizenships (justice oriented, personally responsible and participatory). We read about Cesar Chavez after our own job situation activity and found out about a real life solution that had been performed by Chavez. We made links to our own ways to solve the problem to the way that a historical leader solved his problem. We defined hunger -strike and used our previous knowledge to help us come up with a classroom definition. We used discussion tactics to construct ideas that would be adopted by the class as a whole. Since language skills are developed through reading out loud, being read to and in actually discussion all of these methods were worked in to this lesson. 3. Describe strategies for eliciting student thinking and how your ongoing responses further their learning. Cite examples from the clip(s). The entire introduction showed how I chose to elicit student thinking, which agrees with all of the strategies that I used throughout this text. I wanted to paint the picture in an energetic tone. I wanted students to use their imaginations to picture themselves in the shoes of an adult having to make adult decisions that would affect more than just themselves. Youve got the job, congratulations; You cant quit, remember you have to support your family, you dont want your kids to starve. These were ways for me to elicit thinking and inspiration into the minds of my students. I wanted them to first be engaged, and then once I had them, I didnt want thinking to stop, so I kept going with questions in order to shape the thinking of my students. 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. The terms that we are using in our second step curriculum that I mentioned above involving types of citizens, are a bit complex and it is hard for students to actually maintain a definition for what all of the words mean. Therefore, the connection that I wanted to make was not successful because the abstract definitions hadnt truly been grasped the way that they should have been in a previous lesson. The connection between what students wanted to do about their own job scenario did not take hold of the way that Cesar Chavez had done in his own plan for a solution; partly because starving yourself to get something done doesnt seem to be as real world in the lives of my students. They know that if they attempt to starve themselves to get something done, the only thing that would be done is their decision to be starved. Therefore, I would have come back to our discussion after having read what Chavez had done and posed a richer question forcing them to see what he had done and how odd of an idea it was to promote for himself. Then I could have maybe used some of the truth by saying, What do you think would be done if you chose a hunger strike today in order to get something done? Nothing, because no one will care, thats not the best decision to make. Then students could see the irony in what happened for Chavez, and then concluded by saying that a lot of people must have cared for him. Students however, were able to define hunger strike quite well because of the strike that had occurred earlier in the year. Students were also able to make acceptable to point out the problem in the job scenario and produce great argument against it in finding ways to get what they wanted instead. Another success in the lesson was the amount of engagement. 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? In order to take advantage of the missed opportunities I would focus more time allowing students to compare their proposals to the proposal that Chavez had made. Pointing out how people had to care for Chavez in order for something so drastic to actually work. I would also make sure that students have a better grasp on those citizenship terms in order for them to be in a better position to label Cesar Chavez. I am also, always looking for a way for instruction to work in a more student-centered kind of way, so I could possibly work a jigsaw in to the lesson, where each group could discuss then present their own topic to the class.