Emily MacLaren observed a 9th grade English class focusing on positioning in texts. She reviewed representation in student journals and introduced positioning, framing how authors, readers, and texts are positioned. Students discussed author's purposes and created a list. Emily introduced a graphic organizer to analyze positioning examples from To Kill a Mockingbird. Students found examples in their novels. There was limited time for student sharing. Goals included providing the final performance task to contextualize learning and limiting quotation sources to focus on a specific character.
Emily MacLaren observed a 9th grade English class focusing on positioning in texts. She reviewed representation in student journals and introduced positioning, framing how authors, readers, and texts are positioned. Students discussed author's purposes and created a list. Emily introduced a graphic organizer to analyze positioning examples from To Kill a Mockingbird. Students found examples in their novels. There was limited time for student sharing. Goals included providing the final performance task to contextualize learning and limiting quotation sources to focus on a specific character.
Emily MacLaren observed a 9th grade English class focusing on positioning in texts. She reviewed representation in student journals and introduced positioning, framing how authors, readers, and texts are positioned. Students discussed author's purposes and created a list. Emily introduced a graphic organizer to analyze positioning examples from To Kill a Mockingbird. Students found examples in their novels. There was limited time for student sharing. Goals included providing the final performance task to contextualize learning and limiting quotation sources to focus on a specific character.
Emily MacLaren observed a 9th grade English class focusing on positioning in texts. She reviewed representation in student journals and introduced positioning, framing how authors, readers, and texts are positioned. Students discussed author's purposes and created a list. Emily introduced a graphic organizer to analyze positioning examples from To Kill a Mockingbird. Students found examples in their novels. There was limited time for student sharing. Goals included providing the final performance task to contextualize learning and limiting quotation sources to focus on a specific character.
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Student Teacher__Emily MacLaren
School_UA School for Media Studies
Observation #__4_ Date __4/13/16 Class ___9th Grade ELA Skills_Period_4, 11:13-11:58__ Main Lesson Objective (short range concept):__Students will be able to practice determining how positioning occurs in texts I. GETTING STARTED/INTRODUCING THE LESSON Yes Establishes opening balance of firmness and friendliness yes Introduces focused, short-range performance objective(s) yes Establishes organized agendathe main steps for learning new knowledge somewhat_Motivates students to become interested in the learning objective yes Engages students in generating relevant prior knowledge upon which to build no Helps students contextualize the lesson within the broader unit of study yes Establishes behavior guidelines necessary for a productive lesson General Observations: (This is a class that focuses on literacy skills with independent reading as its focal point. This class meets twice a week. ) Students began to work as soon as they entered the room. They took their journals, or were encouraged to take their journals or were given their journals by Emily. She greeted the class with a friendly hello to get quiet and acknowledged that they hadnt met in a while (about 2 weeks) and so they would begin by reviewing and sharing what they had last written in their journals on representation. How did you say you would represent your journal to a classmate (talk about it, write about it, blog about it) based on what you have read so far and explain how your representation will affect how others see and understand the reading. Students shared their journal entries as Emily moved around the room, speaking to each table group. At the end of five minutes the students shared what they had spoken about. Emily summed up and moved the lesson forward by noting that authors make specific decisions in order to appeal to readers through their images, font choice, design elements. She introduced the idea of positioningthat authors, readers and texts are all positioned with the text at the center. Readers and writers bring their social position, life history, experiences, memories, languages to the text to help them interpret it. Writers bring the same things to the texts they writesocial position, life history, etc. After this framing, Emily stated the goal for the dayToday we will examine positioning in the books we are reading. Strengths for this phase: Emily was in full command of the class She had a pertinent Do Now She framed the lesson with a brief reintroduction to representation and positioning Her classroom management was firm, no heads were allowed to be down, everyone had to answer questions Goals for this phase: Have the final performance task for the students so they understand how what they are learning fits in to the final project that they will have to produce II. TEACHING/IMPLEMENTING THE LESSON
Needs more clarity during the lesson_Establishes key learning objective (concept) and how students will understand it somewhat_Gives in-depth presentation of the learning objective and builds lesson around it yes Offers students deductive (direct teaching) and inductive (discovery) approaches yes Uses instructional formats to appeal to verbal, visual and kinesthetic modes yes__Presents new knowledge, not previously taught knowledge (review, etc.) yes Designs varied activities for applying new knowledge (individual, pairs, groups) somewhat_Provides clear directions and expectations for each learning activity yes Structures and paces lesson for unity and completeness, including debriefing somewhatUses effective questioning to generate critical thinking and multiple views yes_ Manage students effectively throughout the lesson present in the lesson Provides traditional and performance-based assessment of new knowledge General Observations: The question What can positioning imply? was projected on the Smart Board with two subheadings What the author wants to portray, or authors purpose and What are some authors purposes? The discussion that followed was to make a long list of the reasons why authors write to persuade, inform, educate, entertain, etc. This list was written on the board and students were asked to copy it down on their handout. All students participated in creating the list. From here, students were introduced to the 3-column graphic organizer with the headings Example, How Does Positioning Occur, Importance. Emily walked the students through the process of filling out the organizer by using two examples from To Kill A Mockingbird. Students then had about 7 minutes to find two quotations in their Independent Reading novel to use in the graphic organizers Example column and to fill in the other two columns noting how positioning occurs and interpreting its importance. Strengths for this Phase: The task was thought provoking, analytical and evaluative Many students participated in the note taking about authors purpose Students worked on filling in the graphic organizer Goals for this Phase: Set a purpose for doing this activityshow students the final assessment assignment so they can understand why they are doing what they are doing with representation and positioning Limit the number of pages students had to choose their quotation from. Paging through a whole book looking for examples of positioning is too time consuming. If the final performance task required providing examples for one specific character in the beginning, middle and end of the book, the students could focus on finding the examples usable in their final project III. CLOSING/DEBRIEFING THE LESSON almost__Paces lesson to provide for an effective culminating display of new knowledge NA Provides clear directions for homework application of learning objective no__Invites students to debrief by articulating the lessons personal and cognitive benefits Observations/Goals:
There was only time for one student to share what had been put on the graphic organizer. IV. OVERALL PROFESSIONAL STANDARDS __yes__Reflects on/evaluates how instructional choices and actions affect students __yes__Builds relationships and seeks resources that support students active learning __yes__Is flexible in accommodating varied learning aptitudes and formats ___yes_Is objective and calm in dealing with the unexpected Observations/Goals: I saw that Emily had responded to my comments from the last observations. She was in command, she wrote notes on the board, she asked questions and waited for answers, she had an ambitious learning goal and plan, she elicited prior knowledge. The next step is to provide students with the purpose for learning in the form of a performance task about representation and positioning. Providing the performance task which will assess what they have learned about these two things will give direction to the lessons and make learning about them authentic and purposeful.
