Supporting English Teachers
As an English teacher with a reading endorsement on my certification and a master's degree in reading education, I am highly specialized in helping infuse reading strategies into the English curriculum. I have been invited into several English teachers rooms this year to share model lessons with them. Below are some of the lessons that I designed.
THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME
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A ninth grade English teacher asked me to help her begin a unit on "The Most Dangerous Game", a short story by Richard Connell. I decided to use the website PollEverywhere to create an anticipation guide that introduced the most significant issues brought up in this story. The anticipation guide helps to activate background knowledge and establish a purpose for reading.
I created a second powerpoint* for the teacher to use with her classes after reading so that students could compare their opinions on key issues before reading with their opinions after reading. I followed up with the teacher afterwards and she told me that her students enjoyed the anticipation guide on PollEverywhere because they were allowed to use their cell phones and they were able to share their responses and view their classmates' responses almost instantly. She said she also felt that the anticipation guide enhanced her students' comprehension and led to more meaningful discussions during reading. *Polleverywhere surveys can be embedded directly into powerpoint presentations, therefore these files are best shared as powerpoint files. |
The Witch of Blackbird Pond
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One of the first-year teachers that I am working with asked me to share some ideas for helping her 11th grade students comprehend the novel The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare. I included activities such as making inferences to determine setting, a two-column chart for keeping track of differences between the main character and other characters, and a written response for after reading. Her class was on Chapter 5, but I read the novel in its entirely before I created this lesson so that I would be able to prepare her students to understand events that occur later in the novel. In addition to this lesson, I wrote reading log prompts that she can use after every chapter in the book.
After the lesson I met with the teacher to follow up. She said that she liked the two-column chart but found it easier to simply discuss events in the novel orally. I explained to her that our goal is to give students strategies that they can use one their own and not to allow them to rely on us to explain everything to them. This was a "lightbulb moment" for this teacher and she vowed to keep that in mind as she planned future lessons. |
The Pit and the Pendulum
My textbook with post-it notes:
Student reflections:
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When I was asked to share a lesson that would help students comprehend Edgar Allen Poe's short story, "The Pit and the Pendulum", I was a little uneasy. I always found Poe's writing to be challenging myself, and I was not familiar with this story. As I began reading I remembered what it was like to be a struggling reader. Fortunately, I have a vast array of strategies available to me to aid my comprehension. I began recording my questions on post-it notes and returning to the post-its when I found the answer to my question. This strategy helped me stay focused on the text and gave me a purpose for reading (to find the answers to my questions). I decided that if this strategy worked for me, it would work for others. Before explaining the strategy to the class, I showed them my book filled with post-it notes so that they would know that I really had used this strategy myself. When I met with the teacher afterwards to discuss, she said that her students appreciated that I shared the truth that I had struggled to understand the text too. Instead of thinking that these strategies are just for "struggling" students, they saw that the strategies can help anyone. I had the students write reflections about how the strategy helped them. A few samples are provided on the left.
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The Crucible
At our English PLC in October, we were discussing the skill of analysis. That was when two teachers said that they would like to see a model lesson on character analysis with The Crucible by Arthur Miller. I agreed to work on that and developed this lesson that I modeled in both teachers' rooms. Since character analysis can seem complicated, I began the lesson by demonstrating how to complete the character analysis chart using a popular celebrity, Miley Cyrus. After filling out this character analysis chart with the class, I stepped back and allowed the teachers to take over. Completing the charts on the three main characters (John Proctor, Abigail Williams and Reverend Hale) would be a process that would take place over the next week and a half as they read the play. After reading they could use the charts to write a character analysis essay on one of the three characters. The lesson included an example character analysis essay and a rubric. The feedback that I received from both teachers was that filling out the charts during reading and using them to help with writing really emphasized the importance of using specific evidence from the text to support assertions. They reported seeing more specific details from the text in their students' essays, because the evidence was easily available on the charts. They also appreciated that I created a rubric and showed it to the students before they started their essays so that expectations were clear. They both intend to use these techniques in the future.
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