Heather Sanderson
Eastern Connecticut University
Reflection for Lesson Planning Process
November 18, 2018
Making lesson plans for my EL students really brought together all that I have learned in this course. I re-read through the sheltered instruction strategies thinking about which ones would benefit my students in the assignments I was creating. I thought about my field observations and which types of lessons the EL students seemed most engaged in. I contemplated how I could provide the proper differentiation to make sure I did not lose my EL students in the lesson, like I had seen happen many times in my observations. I needed to take the time to review my own science NGSS standards and create lesson that not only would showcase the student’s science content knowledge but also their reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills. In the end I feel that I created lessons that my EL students would be able to feel confident in participating in. Many of my lessons involve group collaboration which is so important in science class, but is also a great sheltered instruction strategy to provide the EL student with a low stress environment to practice discussing science content. All of my lessons allow me to provide my basic level EL students with a “jumpstart” to the lesson by pre-teaching the vocabulary. Two of the assignments involve online presentation submissions that allow the students to record themselves as many times as they need to until they are confident in the results. My assignments involve retrieving information from multiple types of sources such as lab observations, online videos, textbooks, simulations, and hand built prototypes which reach many different types of learners to improve the likely hood of success. Overall, I am confident that I have learned how to provide a well thought out lesson plan that my EL students can access with confidence.