Lesson Planning

For my students in second through eighth-grade, I primarily use pull-out small group instruction as my main teaching strategy. With students spread out among many different classes, this is the most efficient way for me to instruct my ELLS. During my pull-outs, I align my lessons with mainstream classroom instruction through sharing resources with content-area teachers, as well as collaborative planning. Here is an example of a lesson plan that I made for my third-grade students, featuring a Socratic seminar. This is for the Under the Sea unit that was featured in the previous page, Unit Planning. Each lesson I plan has Common Core Standard alignment, as well as an overall student objective. There is a short word work component of my lesson to help boost fluency, and then I delve into teaching the main objective. In this lesson, I planned a Socratic seminar in order to help prepare my students for their final End of Module Assessment answering the question- Why do people explore the sea? This shows evidence of curriculum alignment, as well as backwards-planing. Below, you can see a completed speaking rubric that was used to assess the outcome of this lesson. This rubric measured that the student was able to effectively engage in a conversation about our focus question, meeting my overall lesson objective, and preparing him for our EOM assessment.

The second lesson I included is an example of how I scaffold curriculum-aligned instruction for multiple grade levels. This lesson was for a combined fourth and fifth-grade pull-out instructional group. The fourth grade was working on a unit called A Great Heart, while the fifth grade was working on a unit called Cultures in Conflict. When looking through this lesson plan, you will notice how under "Procedures" I include two main components in my lesson. First, I do whole group instruction, where students participate in interactive journaling and focus on an overall skill. In this example, the skill was reviewing how to fill out a KWL chart when reading- something that is essential for both grade levels to know how to do. Then, I have a break-out group component, where students partner up according to their grade levels and do an activity aligned with the content in their ELA classes. Through differentiating instruction in this manner, I am able to ensure that our ESOL class time is an effective and efficient block focusing on targeted ELL instruction. Below you can see how my students were working on their graphic organizers, separated by grade level. Fourth grade is working together on The Great Heart unit in example 2, and fifth grade is working on the Cultures in Conflict unit in example 3.

My planning for classroom emersion is slightly less intensive, however just as crucial for my early-elementary aged students. Because students in younger grades learn the foundations of social and instructional language, including phonics, in their classroom, I primarily use classroom emersion, or "push-in" strategies to assist my ESOL students with English language acquisition. Also, because the Wit and Wisdom curriculum is highly advanced for early-elementary students in general, it would be even more of a disservice to these students if they were to miss classroom instruction time. For these lessons, I keep track of the standards that my students are learning in the classroom and premeditate the accommodations I will provide them while pushing in. If my students are not able to meet the standards and end of lesson objectives, I then pull them out to reinforce what they learned in the classroom.

Here are two examples of classroom immersion lesson plans. I work with the general content teachers to establish what lesson our students will be working on that day and read through the lesson before pushing in for that class period. Then, I take note of what supports my students will need to anticipate providing these supports for them. You will also notice in the prekindergarten lesson that I pull my ESOL students aside for a part of the lesson and complete a Words Their Way word sort activity. This provides my ESOL students with an extra dose of fluency instruction without having to actually leave the classroom. Below you can see me pushing in for these actual lessons to work with my students on the activities outlined in the push-in lesson plans.