PEDAGOGY: Second Grade
Teaching
- Develops and documents instructional plans that are appropriately aligned with the Alabama Courses of Study.
- Develops and implements detailed lesson plans.
- Implements developmentally appropriate curricular materials and activities.
- Collaborates with appropriate school personnel when planning lessons (e.g., cooperating teacher, ELL teacher, collaborative teacher, paraprofessionals).
- Uses various grouping strategies (e.g., whole group instruction, group work, think-pair-share, cooperative learning, small group instruction, co-teaching).
- Uses a variety of instructional models to promote higher-order thinking (e.g., problem-based learning, group investigation, concept attainment, inductive model, integrative model).
- Uses technology to increase student engagement (ELMO, overhead projector, digital projector, multimedia, Smart Board).
- Differentiates instruction to facilitate the attainment of learning objectives.
- Uses wait time and scaffolding to support thoughtful student responses.
Description & Rationale
Upon close examination of the unit plan posted on the Content page for this unit, it should be evident that I developed and implemented a detailed unit plan where the objectives, strategies, and activities aligned appropriately with ALCoS standards. In addition to meeting standards for English and Language Arts, I taught across the curriculum in this unit by requiring the students to write about other subjects they were studying or had studied in second grade. Concurrently with this unit, we were doing the VERY popular science unit on butterflies, so naturally, that was the hot topic of choice. However, other students wrote about the life cycles of other animals, such as the dragonfly and the sea turtle. Some students favored the solar system, and a couple of students wrote about stories the class had read for Reading.
Consistent with the theories associated with brain-based learning, I opened every lesson with a reading of Dear Teacher as the students gathered on the carpet at my feet. This book was relevant for the unit and relevant to the lives of the students. It was fun, amusing, and interesting. It had great examples of letter format, punctuation, proper nouns, and capitalization. It showed the kids that writing was attainable, adventurous, and normal for the little boy in the book who was trying to avoid his first day of school. The children begged me to read it all the time. It appealed to their sense of humor, and it promoted the kind of high expectations/low stress environment for delivering content that I wanted to achieve. Throughout this unit, I employed various grouping strategies to optimize time management, communication, and student learning. Some lessons were designed for the whole class where I used scaffolded questions, wait time, and pair/shares. For some small group lessons, I grouped students based upon proximity. At other times, I worked with the students based upon their small reading group designations (i.e. Blue Group, Orange Group, Yellow Group, and Green Group). This allowed me to differentiate some instruction based upon the needs of the students. For example, for members of the Blue Group, I expected and encouraged more sophisticated sentences with higher order language. For members of the Green Group, just getting five coherent sentences was a major feat that was celebrated by all. As the lessons progressed toward the end of the unit, I began one-on-one conferences with students. I planned activities that involved games (“Is It a Pronoun of Not?”) and working with partners, such as the Thesaurus Hunt (click here). In the Thesaurus Hunt, I gave the students a list of words in a chart. Working with a partner and a Thesaurus, the students had to locate substitute words for the words on the list. We also had a peer-review edit center where students gave and received feedback about their works-in-progress. I used lots of technology in this unit from the ELMO and ActiveBoard to BrainPop Jr. www.brainpopjr.com and some letter-generating software from ReadWriteThink. Of course, we also used the internet and Microsoft Word to design stationary with borders and relevant clip-art. |
Reflection
For me, using BrainPop Jr. was a “no-brainer.” I have been using it for a while, and I will most definitely use it when I teach in the future. I found ReadWriteThink recently and think it is an excellent website. It was one of many internet resources I learned of while at Blossomwood. Probably my best resource in this unit was the book Dear Teacher by Amy Husband. To say that the students loved it when I read them this book would be an understatement. We shared so many smiles and giggles reading the book and talking about it. I could interject content-related questions as a part of the fun discussion and the kids did not think anything about it. I loved reading to the children. It brought out my theatre/acting background as I performed parts of the story or altered my voice to represent a character. The children were so engaged and eager in their responses. I really felt like I was being a fun and effective teacher.
During several small group lessons and individual conferences, I devised a way to help some struggling students articulate their thoughts in the process of writing. I had them tell me, orally, what they wanted to express. As they did, I simply dictated what they said. Then I showed the students the paper upon which I had written their words. This revealed that everything they needed was already in their heads and to trust that. They then took this dictation and developed it further in their writing. This method seemed to alleviate some anxiety about writing. It allowed them to be freer. I believe some of them got fixated on this idea that writing has to be more formal or official than the spoken word. This fixation inhibited some of them. My method of connecting the spoken word to the written word assisted many of them in moving forward and getting their paragraphs written.
During several small group lessons and individual conferences, I devised a way to help some struggling students articulate their thoughts in the process of writing. I had them tell me, orally, what they wanted to express. As they did, I simply dictated what they said. Then I showed the students the paper upon which I had written their words. This revealed that everything they needed was already in their heads and to trust that. They then took this dictation and developed it further in their writing. This method seemed to alleviate some anxiety about writing. It allowed them to be freer. I believe some of them got fixated on this idea that writing has to be more formal or official than the spoken word. This fixation inhibited some of them. My method of connecting the spoken word to the written word assisted many of them in moving forward and getting their paragraphs written.