Megan Tunon Assignment 3 Week 2 Lesson Plan

Lesson: Anticipation guide for reading Mark Twains The Jumping frog of Calaveras County. Satisfying the proficiency standards for Language Arts, including speaking and writing, and listening and reading for Level 4 (Expanding) ESL students in grades 9-12. Objective: Students will be able to use their prior knowledge and apply it to a work of fiction, increasing their level of comprehension and enthusiasm about the text. Students will be able to use newly learned vocabulary to increase their comprehension of a text in English. Students will be able to articulately discuss their ideas about a work of fiction in English, and relate it to real life (text to self). Before receiving an anticipation guide, students will receive a list of vocabulary words that are used in both the guide and the text that we will be reading in class today. The list of words will be reviewed, along with phonics and definitions for each word. Students can refer to the list throughout the lesson to define unknown vocabulary. Next, each student receives an anticipation guide asking questions that relate to the themes of the text. These questions relate to real life and are explored in the text. Students have time to answer the questions on their own, then the class discusses their responses to the questions. After the discussion, the class reads the text together, discussing the new vocabulary words in context. Once the reading is complete, the students break into groups of four to review their answers to the questions in the anticipation guide and discuss how themes of the questions relate to the themes of the text. Students will discuss whether characters acted differently than they would have in the same or similar situations- perhaps they have actually been in a similar situation in the past and can relate their personal story. The teacher will circulate around the room and join in the group conversations. To summarize what they learned, students will write a paragraph, as a group, describing the similarities and differences in their responses to the anticipation guide, and the characters actions in the text.

Megan Tunon Assignment 3 Week 2 Lesson Plan Reflection:

At first, this lesson seemed like it was a really good fit for my level 4 English language learners. They have an expanding grasp on the English language and can create complex sentence structures. Their vocabulary is expanding and they are beginning to articulate themselves well, with a few errors here and there. Additionally, their reading comprehension is improving and they are able to make connections from text to self. The text that we read, a piece by Mark Twain, was chosen because of its level of difficulty- it would be a challenge for these students, but not inaccessible. As students are used to the introduction of new vocabulary words, it was routine for them to learn the words from Jumping Frog. This part of the lesson went quite smoothly. When it came to the anticipation guide, however, some of the questions proved confusing for some of the students. It wasnt so much the language that they struggled with, but the content. When teaching a classroom of students from a variety of different cultures, some concepts are not fully understood by some. For this reason, much of the time was spent discussing the social norms that are associated with the questions being asked by the guide. Furthermore, much clarification was needed when reading the text, because the dialects that Twain introduces are so far from standard English, even a native speaker has trouble with the words. Also, not all of my students had studied the Civil War era of American History, so the setting, events, and motivations of the characters were not entirely clear. During the cooperative group portion of the lesson, students helped each other answer questions about the text, and some had lively discussions about the answers on their guide and how they differed from the actions of the characters in the story. For its part, the group discussion was quite beneficial for the study of the text, and it served as great practice in speaking. While the text and its themes proved a bit difficult, I believe that the use of the anticipation guide was still a valuable practice. When I use it in the future, more consideration will be made as to the appropriateness of the text in its social implications.