Content Literacy Lesson
Content Literacy Lesson
Content Literacy Lesson
Identified Needs
2 students with Autism and
ADD/ADHD
2 with ADD/ADHD
Accommodations
Extra support through verbal
praise and encouragement during
the lesson, check understanding,
aid assistance
Monitoring throughout lesson,
check understanding, aid
assistance
HSS5.5.2
KnowthesignificanceofthefirstandsecondContinentalCongressesandofthe
CommitteesofCorrespondence.
ii.
CCSS.ELALITERACY.RI.5.2.
Determinetwoormoremainideasofatextandexplain
howtheyaresupportedbykeydetails;summarizethetext.
iii.
5.A.COLLABORATIVE.1. Exchanginginformationandideaswithothersthroughoral
collaborativediscussionsonarangeofsocialandacademictopics.
B. Objectives
i.
ii.
C. Assessments:
i.
Informal assessment strategies you will use during class (What evidence will you
see/hear?)
Informal assessment strategies include questioning and monitoring. I will hear students
communicating about how cooperation aids in decision making and proper history words
such as delegate, committee, correspond, unify, militia, and comparing. I will also hear
students discussing the importance of each meeting and the importance of how the
colonies cooperated. I will monitor to see if students are following along in their
workbook, if they are highlighting, underlining, or circling the correct information, and if
they are summarizing the correct events.
ii.
Written assessment you will use to determine, for each individual student, to what extent
they have met your learning objectives. (What evidence will you collect?)
Collect summary at end of class and homework the following day.
Introduction (5 min.): Describe how you will 1) make connections to prior knowledge, tap into
their experiences and interests or use a hook, AND 2) let students know what the objective of
the lesson is.
Introduction: Set the Scene.
Ask students if they have ever worked in a group? How did it go? When did you work in
a group? Was it recent?
Explain how working in a group is more effective that working alone and that the
colonists realized they had to work together in order to cause change.
Tell students the objective of this lesson is for them to summarize the importance of
colonists working together and how their working together caused change and unified the
colonies.
Body of the Lesson (35 minutes): Describe step-by-step what the teacher and the students will
be doing during the lesson.
Before: Think Pair Share.
Think: Have students think about if they have ever worked in a group or team.
Pair: Have students turn to a partner to share how it makes you feel when working in a
team. And what the benefits are to working in teams.
Share: Teacher will ask for volunteers to share either their answer or their partners
answer on how they feel about working in teams versus independently and why.
During:
Review aspects of a summarydo not rewrite the original piece, keep the summary
short, use your own wording, refer to central and main ideas, read with who, what, when,
where, why, and how questions in mind, do not put own opinion into summary tell
students We are going to be writing a summary at the end of the lesson about how
colonists worked together to cause change.
Predict
What chapter is about
o Show workbook page 107 with only the text features showing (in materials)ask
for prediction
What do you see?
What do you think this page is about based on the text features?
Have students share with partner what they think
Have students share with whole group of what they mentioned or
what their partner mentioned.
Repeat for pages 108, 109 after completed pg. 107
Fill out Know part of KWL chart based on the text features in lessonBased on the
information we have read and in previous lessons, what have we learned about
cooperation?
o Check for understandingsee if IEP/504 and struggling students are
comprehending the informationThumbs up or down if you agree with these
items and if you could tell them to your friend.
Define unfamiliar words: delegate, committee, correspond, unify, militia, uni-
Identify and explain importance of pictures and text features within this lesson and how
they relate to cooperationpicture of men at the table working at table, title, Colonies
decide to meet
Based on looking through the text features, ask students what they Want to learn about
cooperation among the colonists that we have not learned thus far.
o AskWhat do we still want to know about cooperation that we have not found?
o Fill in Want to know section of chart
o Give examples for each categoryWhere in the text did you think of that
question?
Read first paragraph to class pg 108
Have students read twice independently
Reread again aloud
Answer What events led to the Albany Congress.
Ask how students arrived at answer
Ask students to summarize the paragraph by writing it on the blank piece
of paper
AskHow did the colonists work together during the Albany Congress?
Read second paragraph to class
Have students read twice independently
Reread again aloud
Read second paragraph pg. 108
Answer What was the purpose of the Committees of Correspondence?
Ask how students arrived at answer
Ask students to summarize the second paragraph by writing it on their
summary piece of paper
AskHow did the colonists cooperate during the Committee of
Correspondence?
Read third paragraph pg. 109
Answer What were the results of the First Continental Congress?
Ask how students arrived at answer
Ask students to summarize the third paragraph by writing it on their
summary piece of paper
AskHow did the colonists work together during the First Continental
Congress?
Read fourth paragraph pg. 109,
Answer In the text, underline the actions taken by the Second Continental Congress.
Ask how students arrived at answer
Ask students to summarize the fourth paragraph by writing it on their summary piece of
paper
AskHow did the colonists work together during the Second Continental Congress?
Summarize main events that led colonists to successfully cooperate and how colonists
were able to cause change.
Students write a summary of how the colonists worked together to cause change within
the colonies.
Remind students they have summaries of the paragraphs and now the question is asking
to determine how cooperation was successfully used to cause change.
Check for understandingsee if IEP/504 and struggling students are
comprehending the information and are able to write the summary
2. Language Function: How will students be communicating in relation to the content in the
learning task(s)? Identify the specific function (purpose or genre) you want to
systematically address in your lesson plan that will scaffold students to stronger disciplinary
discourse. The language function will always be a verb. Some examples are: describe,
identify, explain, justify, analyze, construct, compare, or argue.
Students will summarize how cooperation aids in decision making by completing a written
summary of the events of the lesson.
3. Language Demands: Looking at the specific function (purpose or genre) your students will
be using, what are the language demands that you will systematically address in this lesson?
Vocabulary:
Key to this lesson: delegate, committee, correspond, unify, militia, uniSyntax1: ]ggvf
First
Next
Then
Lastly
Finally
Later
After
Prior to
Discourse2: Students will read the text, answer questions relevant to the paragraphs,
annotate their text, discuss with a partner, share what they learned with the whole class,
offer information for the KWL chart, and write an independent summary.
4. Language Objective: What is/are the language objective(s) for your lesson? (The students
will (FUNCTION) (LANGUAGE RELATED TO CONTENT) (SYNTAX AND/OR
DISCOURSE)
For example: The students will compare different types of parallelograms using transition
words such as similarly, different from or by contrast. Note: be sure to copy and paste this
into the top of the lesson planner.
Students will summarize how the colonists worked together and how this cooperation caused
change using sequence words to join ideas such as First, Next, Then, Then, Lastly, Finally,
Later, After, and Prior to.
5. What does your language objective sound like/look like for different levels of language
learners? Ask yourself, What would the students say/write when using the language
1Use of a variety of sentence types to clarify a message, condense information, and combine ideas, phrases, and clauses.
2 Discourse includes the structures of written and oral language, as well as how member of the
discipline talk, write, and participate in knowledge construction.
function. Remember to consider the language demands while creating sample language that
the students might use.
Emerging
Expanding
Bridging
Starthere!
The colonists worked together
by ______________ to cause
change.
The Albany Congress showed
_______ about the colonists.
The Committee of
Correspondence allowed
_______ to help unify the
colonies because _______.
The Continental Congress
took steps to solve ____
(problems listed) by ______
preparing the colonies for
war.
6. Language Support: What instructional strategies will you use during your lesson to teach
the specific language skill and provide support and opportunities for guided and independent
practice?
Instruction
Introduce new words and have
students tell the word to a
partner and what they think the
word means
Guided Practice
Have students annotate text
underline
Independent Practice
Set norms for partner
share/interaction
Sentence starters
Partner/group work
Think-Pair-Share
Rephrase/re-voice student
responses
7. Be sure to incorporate your ideas in #6 above into your actual lesson plan!
Assessment Notes:
* Be sure to incorporate assessment items of your targeted academic language into your
assessments.
* Be sure to review any assessments you are going to use, and consider what modifications you
may need to make for your language learners.
Part 4: Lesson Analysis
In addition to answering the questions below, annotate (make notes on) the actual lesson plan to
indicate what worked, what didnt, missed opportunities you had, where you collected evidence
of student learning, how you monitored students, and other anecdotes.
LEARNING GOAL
1. What was your content learning objective/goal?
Students will summarize the importance of the colonists working together and how it caused
change within the colonies.
EVIDENCE
2. a) What specific examples of student learning do you have that showed students met or
made progress toward the content learning objective? Please complete the chart below.
Teacher Actions &/or Strategies
Students were asked to summarize the
main point of the first paragraph
b) Write a narrative that explains the decisions and strategies you used that led to successful
student learning of your content learning objective.
Questioning was a strategy that was used successfully because I was able to lead the
students in the direct direction of summarizing each paragraph. I was able to ask students to
tell me the summary and I received an answer. However, the student answering the question
would first tell me a sentence from the text. I then asked them, If you did not have your
book in front of you what would you tell me? There were then able to rephrase the
information and tell me through their own words, after a moment of thinking. Questioning
enabled me to hear what students were thinking and it enabled me to guide them toward the
learning objective of summarizing.
Another strategy that was used successfully was the use of the KWL chart. Students were
able to connect the text features to what they know about cooperation based on the previous
information about the colonies and things they still want to know about cooperation while
reading the text. Students were able to look at the text features and relate them to cooperation
after being questioned. They were also able to create questions about what they still want to
know about cooperation and how the colonists benefitted from it. This was successful
because students had specific questions they could answer throughout the lesson. They could
look at the chart with their questions and it enabled them to guide them toward answering the
questions based on the information we read.
c) What evidence is missing? What would you do to capture this evidence in the future?
Evidence that is missing is if all students were able to summarize each paragraph and if
they were able to connect that information to how it lead colonists to cooperate and how it
caused change within the colonies. To capture this in the future, I will have students write out
their summaries of each paragraph as well as a final summary of how colonists cooperated
and how it caused change within the colonies on a separate piece of paper. This summary will
be collected at the end of class as an exit ticket.
3.
a) What specific examples of student learning do you have that showed students struggled
to meet or make progress toward this goal? Please complete the chart below.
b) Write a narrative that explains the decisions and strategies that may have interfered or
created missed opportunities in terms of student learning.
Selecting students to answer each question was a strategy that interfered with student
learning because I kept seeing the same hands raised. When I called on students who did not
raise their hand, it was clear they had not made progress toward the learning goal. They were
not able to summarize the paragraph without referring to direct quotes from the text.
Another strategy that interfered was combining the KWL chart with discussing aspects of
summarizing. I feel these hindered students toward meeting the learning goal because there
was so much going on in this lesson. They were asked to identify aspects of cooperation that
they knew about from previewing the text features and information they wanted to know
about cooperation after previewing the text. Then they were asked to summarize the text
paragraph by paragraph during the lesson. I feel if I focused on one aspect or another, KWL
chart or summarizing the text, it would have been more beneficial for the students.
c) What evidence is missing? What would you do to capture this evidence in the future?
Evidence that is missing is if students are able to summarize events within a paragraph, if
they are able to connect the information to the importance of the colonists working together,
and how it caused change within the colonies. To capture this in the future I will focus on one
aspect. I will focus solely on summarizing. I will have the students read the paragraph twice
and I will read the paragraph to them once more. Then, I will ask them specific questions that
will guide them toward successfully completing the learning goal.
ALTERNATIVE STRATEGIES and NEXT STEPS
4. Considering student learning, if you were to teach this lesson again, what decisions and
strategies would you change (in planning, instruction, and/or assessment) to teach an
upcoming lesson? How do you expect these strategies to impact students achievement of the
lesson learning goal(s)?
If I were to teach this lesson again, I would focus on one specific strategy that leads to the
learning goal. This lesson plan contained too much content for the time allotted. I would
focus solely on summarizing and not have the KWL chart present. I would read the
paragraph aloud and then have the students read the paragraph independently twice after.
Next, I would have the students pair share, share their partners response with the whole
class, then write the summaries of each paragraph. This would be more beneficial because
students would become familiar with the text as they read it. They would also all be required
to write each summary of every paragraph after reading.
I would also have students copy their summaries to a separate piece of paper. By
summarizing each paragraph, and ultimately how cooperation aided the colonists, which is
the learning objective, students can see how cooperation benefitted the colonists. They would
be able to reference their mini summaries, summaries of each paragraph, to compile them
into a summary of the whole chapter.
5. Using the evidence of student learning described and observed, what will be your next steps
in future instruction with the class, small groups, and/or individual students?
Next steps for future instruction will be to finish this lesson. I was not able to finish this
lesson in my allotted time. I will finish this lesson by having students read, re-read,
summarize, and answer how the questions about colonists cooperating correlate to each
paragraph. I will have the students write their summaries and identify the importance of the
colonists working together and how it caused change within the colonies.
Bibliography
History-Social Science for California Our Nation, Scott Foresman, 2006. Unit 5 Lesson 2. This
lesson will be used in this lesson because it is the subsequent lesson in their Social Science unit.
It shows how cooperation within the colonies led to unification and preparation for war if
needed.