Task 1: Planning Commentary
TASK 1: PLANNING COMMENTARY
Respond to the prompts below (no more than 9 single-spaced pages, including prompts) by typing your responses within the brackets. Do not delete or alter the prompts. Pages exceeding the maximum will not be scored.
1. Central Focus
a. Describe the central focus and the essential literacy strategy for comprehending OR composing text you will teach in the learning segment.
[The central focus of this three-day learning segment is for students to be able to retell key details of a story, including: characters, main events, setting, problem, and solution, to identify the tall tale elements in each text. Other goals include encouraging students to actively participate in …show more content…
These students understand that their thoughts, feelings, and opinions are not always the same as those around them. Students are willing to share and listen to other?s ideas. Because of this I feel it is important to provide students with opportunities to discuss and share what they are thinking, thus I have plenty of whole group discussions. Although to provide my students with the appropriate structure of social interaction I had to first understand Vygotsky?s Theory of Cognitive Development. In this theory teachers can only understand students? cognitive developments if they take cultural and social context into consideration. Understanding the demographic make-up of the classroom plays a key roll in planning. My classroom consists of students who go home to single parent families, or participate in multiple activities after school. There is a lack of parental participation in school work and activities. Vygotsky also believed that children learn through guided social interactions. As many of my students lack the necessary social interaction because it is not received after walking out of the school doors each day. Therefore I have adapted my plans to consist of a majority of verbal discussions, teacher modeling, scaffolding, and written (projected) information. This will appeal to both auditory and visual …show more content…
According to Howard Gardner there are multiple ways that children learn, and they possess multiple intelligences. It is the teacher?s job to not only teach the material, but also make sure that students learn the material. By knowing your students and they way they comprehend material, you are best able to help them understand the learning segment. I have found that the students in my class best learn when hearing and seeing the literacy strategy. Thus, throughout each lesson I will provide visuals, along with orally modeling the process of retelling, sequencing, and summarizing the story while in a whole class setting to guide lower level students through the learning process. This type of instructional scaffolding will provide students with the extra help needed to participate in discussions and complete the desired task. If more help is needed I will engage students individually in discussion while working on individual work. All of this guides students towards expanding their comprehension, and provides them with the desired skills needed to identify the tall tale elements in each story.]
c. Describe common developmental approximations or common misconceptions within your literacy central focus and how you will address