Component 4: Strategies

Feature 14: Scaffold the Lesson Carefully

Detailed explanation of how you address this feature. Specifically explain step by step your plan of how you would release responsibility and help students to master the language and content objectives - see Feature 1.  Be specific about the language needs of your EL.

Justification: How is your scaffolding plan supporting the specific needs of your EL.

Include relevant artifacts/supplementary materials.

Sergei is L3 English speaker, so 

1. We begin the lesson with a class discussion about what we learned in the previous units. This familiarizes Sergei and the rest of the students in the class with what had happened prior to the topic we are about to discuss for the day, and sets the stage for how events could transpire afterwards.

2. In this portion, the class would be completing the discussion collectively, totally guided by my discussion questions, which would be made up on the spot. 

3. Students would then be introduced to the agenda for the day, realizing they will have a lecture, then an activity, then a presentation.

4. Students will sit and listen to the brief lecture, taking notes in their notebooks or on the dictionary sheets that I provide for them.

5. I will then shift the political cartoon activity by showing an example and dissecting it for the students. 

6. Students will then start their political cartoon activity. This shifts the responsibility and leadership of the lesson to the students as they are now responsible for imitating my example at the beginning of the activity to form their own conclusions.

7. Students will practice BICS by talking informally about what they think is meant by the cartoons, using informal language mixed with my academic vocabulary from the word bank in order to formulate some main ideas.

8. Sergei would sit with his friend and helper Neera, who would help him if he needed it but also provide the psychological safety needed in order to give the assignment his full effort. 

9. Students would swap political cartoons once they were done looking at them, getting familiar with all of the material. Students would then briefly discuss to come up with final interpretations for the cartoons.

10. Students will give semi-formal presentations about what they deduced was the theme of the cartoon, the intended audience, the author, and context clues that give these interpretations evidence. All students will be expected to say something during their presentation. Extra wait time will be given to Sergei if he needs it. 

11. Students will be able to agree or disagree with the presenters by raising their hand to questions that I ask about them. Students will be informally evaluated by their thought process on what they think through their hand raising.

12. After every student has presented, they will be asked to write a brief exit ticket explaining three things they learned in class that day, either formally through vocabulary or informally such as a lesson they learned along the way. Students will not be judged on grammar, and instead will be evaluated based on their effort and if what they wrote is along the right idea.*

*See figure 1

Justification: 

Sergei starts by himself by listening to the lecture with his dictionary, which satisfies the listening component of the four domains. Then, during the political cartoon activity, Sergei will be exposed to dialogue with his peers in a variety of contexts. Honigsfeld notes that in order to accurately scaffold a lesson plan, students must speak but in a variety of contexts; Students must discuss, explain, argue, and recount the material with others (Honigsfeld, 93). After discussing the meaning of what the source means with BICS, they would explain their findings to the class using CALPs to demonstrate their learning. The teacher and other students would step in when necessary. Lastly, Sergei and the other students receive feedback from other groups, where they will have to either accept or argue their position. Lastly, students will recount what they learned throughout the day with an exit ticket that gauges their understanding. This is a good scaffold because Sergei starts alone but gradually, through active participation, engages in more difficult tasks. His placement next to his friend Neera also allows Sergei to have a more experienced student who he likes help him. 

Feature 15: Promote Higher Order Thinking Skills

Explain how you could include ONE of the higher order thinking skills. Identify which ONE of the higher order thinking skills from the Bloom's taxonomy would make sense in your lesson. Describe step by step how you would teach this higher order thinking skill. Justification: Tell why/how this higher order thinking skill would be specifically useful for your EL. (Remember, you would do this in your regular teaching, but here focus on your EL.) Include relevant artifacts/supplementary materials.

I would focus on the Analyze higher thinking skill in Bloom’s Taxonomy.

1. Through the PowerPoint, students will be prompted to think about what they had previously learned about in the class, the foundations of the United States, debates about its governmental structure, and conflict concerning domestic politics.**

2. Sergei is very good at math and coding, but this makes him very shy and concise. He likes to see one answer to a question, and doesn’t do as well when faced with a problem with more than one answer. 

3. Sergei will be in a situation where he is forced to consider many different variables to answer the essential question: What factors caused the American Civil War? 

4. Once I analyze a political cartoon for the class, students will have to use context clues in the visuals and vocabulary in speech in order to determine who the author is, what their point of view is, and whether their message was effective. 

5. Students will come up to the answers to these questions on their own, using their peers to bounce off ideas to the proposed questions.

6. Students will then have the opportunity to speak to what their group came up with, and other students will have the opportunity to agree with them or poke criticism towards them. Students will analyze all of the political cartoons, not just their own.

**See example 2

Justification: 

Sergei is from Ukraine and speaks Ukrainian, so not just learning the English words and what they mean, but being able to interpret complex ideas in a visual format is a must and something that native English speakers do with media on a daily basis. To learn how to do this better in their L2 is important for development for integration into the English-speaking majority. If Sergei can analyze an abstract and complex visual argument, and can evaluate its significance, they will be much better equipped to handle the challenges that life has to offer, and will vastly improve his English speaking abilities. 

Sergei’s stage fright and shyness may stem from his internal label that he is better at STEM than humanities topics. That is why it is crucial for him to take a leading role in this lesson, as doing so will enhance his BICS and CALPS skills through informal debate and formal presentation. Additionally, the political cartoons that Sergei and his table will be analyzing will be passed around, so each station will be completing different tasks with each new cartoon. Honigsfeld notes that in order to increase oral development, students need to interact for different purposes (Honigsfeld, 95).

References

Echevarría, J., Vogt., M., & Short, D. J. (2017). Making content comprehensible for English learners: The SIOP model. Pearson. 

Honigsfeld, A. (2019). Growing language & literacy: Strategies for English learners. Heinemann.