The competent teacher has foundational knowledge of reading, writing, and oral communication within the content area and recognizes and addresses student reading, writing, and oral communication needs to facilitate the acquisition of content knowledge.
Connection of Unit Plan to the Illinois Professional Teaching Standards:
IPTS 6.A. States the competent teacher "understands appropriate and varied instructional approaches used before, during, and after reading, including those that develop word knowledge, vocabulary, comprehension, fluency, and strategy use in the content areas." This unit plan contains pre-reading, during reading, and post reading activities that can be used with this book. Creating different activities for each stage of the reading lesson will ensure the students are grasping the concept in more than one way. Reading out loud and emphasizing proper reading skills is a good way to model fluency and reading strategy to make them feel comfortable reading out loud on their own. In this unit plan, I have incorporated analyzation skills, writing skills, vocabulary identification, and drawing skills. I believe it is important to have your lessons use different skills to encompass your whole class. Not every student will like to write or draw, using both strategies I can give each student to use a skill they are comfortable with. Once the students have completed the unit, they will be given a set of comprehension questions to show what they have learned from this unit.
IPTS 6H) States the competent teacher ‘understands how to use a variety of formal and informal assessments to recognize and address the reading, writing, and oral communication needs of each student.” For this unit plan, I have used a variety of assessments for each activity both formal and informal. I have used a lot of observation during discussions and group work to see where the students were at in their learning process. Having the students write in the journal was a no pressure form of assessment because they knew I would not be collecting the journal, just checking to see for their understanding. I was also looking for choral response and hand signals to let me know they were grasping the concepts from this unit. At the end of the lesson, I used a set of comprehension questions to really assess their thinking process through the unit plan.
IPTS 6N) States the competent teacher “uses modeling, explanation, practice, and feedback to teach students to monitor and apply comprehension strategies independently, appropriate to the content learning.” Throughout this unit plan, I have modeled different strategies for reading using fluency and print awareness techniques. Students were also explained the information before we started any activity as well as allowed to practice their skills at home with different books of their choosing. Constructive positive feedback is always given on assignments or after discussions. I believe it is important to let the students know when they have done a good job to promote a healthy classroom culture.