Beginning Unit 4

Now that Unit 3 is coming to completion, it is time to begin Unit 4.

To recap, in Unit 2, I asked you to find material to use in lessons in your content area. In Unit 3, you were to find instructional strategies to use with materials that would enable students to better understand the material you were asking your students to read or view. These strategies were not full lessons but were part of lessons: activities to do with your students before they read, while they read, and after they read the materials you selected.

Now in Unit 4 it is time to put it all together in lessons. There are many lesson resources for teachers, some good, some not. I want you to find these resources and select 2 lessons that you think are good enough that you would use in your content area instruction with minimal changes.

You will review two lessons and provide a link to them, so we may find them as well. In your description of the lessons address the following:

• What content would you be teaching with the lesson?
• What group of students would you be teaching–grade level, content area?
• What do you like about the lesson?
• What would you modify in the lesson?
• Make sure you provide a link to the lesson.

I am also asking you to read 3 articles describing lessons that teachers have developed and to look through related Web sites. You are to post on your blog a short summary of each article and related Web sites (follow instructions on our assignment Web page).

For the last article, there also is a reading guide for you to complete and send to me as an attachment—REMEMBER TO WRITE YOUR NAME AT THE TOP.

• Download the guide and fill out the first part (A. My thoughts before reading the article) BEFORE you read the article.

• Then read the article.

• AFTER YOU HAVE READ the article, complete the last column of the guide (B. My thoughts after or while reading the article—what I would change or add to my thinking) and save the Word document.

• Then attach to email and send to me.

Here are the three articles and reading guide for the last one–these are also on Unit 4 Web page:

• “I” poems: Invitations for students to deepen literary understanding

• The Multigenre Paper: Increasing Interest, Motivation, and Functionality in Research

• A Professional Development Initiative for Developing Approaches to Vocabulary Instruction with Secondary Mathematics, Art, Science, and English Teachers

• Reading Guide for the last article

Respond to your classmates’ posts (I am looking for minimum 10 posts). When you have completed all of that, post a reflection of the course and assignments. See specific instructions on the assignment Web page.

Woody Trathen

Instructional Strategies #1: Literature Circle Review Example

Instructional Strategy #1: Literature Circle Discussion Groups

REVIEWER:
Woody Trathen

TITLE:
Literature Circles

SOURCE:
All America Reads

“All America Reads is a national reading and literacy program produced by the Wish You Well Foundation.

The ongoing program is designed to encourage reading and discussion of novels with broad appeal and accessible themes. The project intends to select additional novels and develop reading strategies and lesson plans for use in classrooms across the nation.

The program’s featured novel, Wish You Well by David Baldacci, remains the initial book for which lesson plans and strategies are available. Funding and personnel are being collected to select additional novels and develop additional resources for readers and educators.

For each novel, All America Reads engages a dedicated team of professional educators who apply the reading theory of Dr. Kylene Beers and other reading specialists as they develop reading strategies and lesson plans for secondary readers.

In addition, the program provides activities and approaches to the novel that promote comprehension and discussion of the text and its themes.”

SITE:
http://www.allamericareads.org/lessonplan/wyw/during/litcircles.htm

DESCRIPTION:

Literature Circles is a structure for promoting careful reading and engaging discussion of course material. Students read the assigned material and then in small groups discuss the material. The discussion circles are aided by activities (roles) that the students are assigned or choose. Roles include: Summarizer, Discussion Director, Investigator, Illustrator, Vocabulary Enricher, Travel Tracer, Connector, as well as others. There are activity sheets that help students prepare their role(s) for discussion. Students may participate in one role each or all students in a group may take on several roles—share roles. The activity sheets are completed prior to discuss, perhaps this can be assigned as homework. The discussion then takes place as students share what they learned as they completed their role—the book is discussed in this process. There can be a journal writing at the conclusion of the discussion.

NCSCOS
English Language Arts (any grade level)

Upper Elementary—Fifth Grade
• Competency Goal 2 The learner will apply strategies and skills to comprehend text that is read, heard, and viewed.
• Competency Goal 3 The learner will make connections through the use of oral language, written language, and media and technology.
• Competency Goal 4 The learner will apply strategies and skills to create oral, written, and visual texts.

Middle Grades—Eighth Grade
• Competency Goal 1 The learner will use language to express individual perspectives through analysis of personal, social, cultural, and historical issues.
• Competency Goal 2 The learner will use and evaluate information from a variety or resources.
• Competency Goal 4 The learner will continue to refine critical thinking skills and create criteria to evaluate print and non-print materials.
• Competency Goal 5 The learner will respond to various literary genres using interpretive and evaluative processes.

High School—English I
• Competency Goal 1 The learner will express reflections and reactions to print and non-print text and personal experiences.
• Competency Goal 5 The learner will demonstrate understanding of various literary genres, concepts, elements, and terms.

EXPLANATION & ELABORATION OF STRATEGY (LITERATURE CIRCLES):

Literature Circles is a very flexible strategy and can be adapted to do many things. One reason I like it is that I can work with a topic (say pirates, for example), select different books (material) on that topic, and make sure that some of the material is easy to read. Then in small groups I can arrange it so that ALL of my students can read material they can handle (differentiated instruction) yet participate in the same high quality activities and discussion. In other words, different groups read different material on the same topic, and I can put some of my struggling readers into material they actually can read. This is more easily done in upper elementary and middle grades but also can work in English courses in high school. Further, the roles can be created to meet your needs as an instructor. For example, you can create a role that is designed to help students find related sources of information on the Internet: Internet Researcher. Or, you can focus on certain character development with the role Character Sketcher. I personally like these roles the best: Vocabulary Wizard (Enricher), Passage Picker, Character Sketcher, and Discussion Director. See other examples of these roles: http://www.ltl.appstate.edu/reading_resources/index_comprehension.html

The roles are the place where you can easily address elements of literary structure or rhetorical devices as well as other aspects of genre. Discussion about books can be organized to stimulate careful reading and critical thinking. Writing (in journals, summaries, multi-genre responses) is a natural extension of this lesson structure.

For more information on Literature Circles, see:
http://www.americanreadingforum.org/Yearbooks/02_yearbook/html/litcircles/frye_trathen/frye_trathen.htm

Woody Trathen

Finishing Unit 2; Beginning Unit 3

Assignments for Unit 2 are due at THE CLOSE OF THE DAY on Friday, October 2. See the blog post example for materials review. Remember that you are to find materials to use in teaching a lesson: the topic you will need to choose. See the blog post Finishing Unit 1, Beginning Unit 2 for more details.

Unit 3

The focus of Unit 3 is on finding activities that you (as the teacher) plan for your students as they read the material you have selected for a lesson. The activities are NOT a lesson plan, but might be part of one. In particular, I am interested in you finding activities that you can do before your students read, while they are reading, and after they finish reading. See the example blog post: Instructional Strategy #1. Also, see these examples of before, during, and after reading instructional strategies.

Ask if you have questions.

Woody Trathen and Omer Ari

Materials Search: Example for Unit 2

For Unit 2, your task is to find material for your students to read or view in a lesson that you might teach.

• Your first step is to decide what curriculum you will be working with, what topic you will be teaching, and the grade level you will be focused on. You need to have an idea of the curriculum goal that you will be addressing.
• Then, look through the resources provided in Unit 2 and on the CAROL Links pages. You will need to spend some time just browsing these sites to see what they contain. This will take time, so plan accordingly.
• Eventually, you will be ready to search for specific resources that you might use in a future lesson.

Here is an example of what I found in a search that took me 80 minutes to complete:

Assuming you are working with the 8th grade curriculum in social studies and want to focus on the Civil War, the following would be a curriculum standard that would apply:

Competency Goal 4
examine the causes, course, and character of the Civil War and Reconstruction,
and their impact on North Carolina and the nation.

• Objective 4.02
  Describe the political and military developments of the Civil War and analyze their effect on the outcome of the war.
• Objective 4.03
  Assess North Carolina’s role in the Civil War and analyze the social and
  economic impact of the war on the state.
• Objective 4.04
  Evaluate the importance of the roles played by individuals at the state and
  national levels during the Civil War and Reconstruction Period.

I first visited LearnNC to see what resources I might find there.
http://www.learnnc.org/scos/

I selected 8th grade social studies, then goal 4, and found valuable resource materials.

Next, I visited Thinkfinity and used the search feature which is very powerful.
http://www.thinkfinity.org/home.aspx

I searched by my topic and grade level and found.
Brief report of the services rendered by the freed people to the United States Army in North Carolina : in the spring of… (1864)

Then, I searched American Memory, from the Library of Congress
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/index.html

I found: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/today/mar11.html
as well as lots of Civil War era photographs, using the search engine

I searched the Internet Public Library
http://www.ipl.org/

Linked to KidSpace and used the search engine
and found useful resources, one was

North Carolina Museum of History
http://ncmuseumofhistory.org/

Where I searched again and found
http://nchistoryresources.org/search/details.cgi?cgisql_join=resources,resource_goals&cgisql_db=resources,resource_goals&cgisql_oid=441

I searched youtube.com for a North Carolina and Civil War video
and found one that is very informative as well as lots of others

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15_ktymXryo

I also searched teachertube.com and found

http://www.teachertube.com/viewVideo.php?video_id=434&title=The_American_Civil_War

You could login to SAS and find lesson plans and materials there.

You could search for relevant books on Amazon.com.

You could use google to search for material.

And these materials are just scratching the surface in terms of what is available. There are many more sites with material that you might use in a lesson. I spent a little over an hour to find all these resources. If you select the right topic, you too will have success in finding material for your students to read and view. Note: you will not post these search results as I just did–this was to provide you with a concrete example of the process of searching for and finding material.

The next step is to decide if you want to use the materials that you found in your search in a lesson that you might teach. For example, with the materials above I could use one or two in a single lesson and another one or two in another lesson. Or, I can use what I want from this search in a lesson and then change topics for a different search and a different lesson post. I will follow the format that the materials worksheet provides and the example in the Materials Review Example (see earlier post). In summary, you may use the same topic and goals for all of your materials posts or you may change the topic. It is NOT necessary that the topic be the same one that you turn in for Unit 1–you can change. In every case, however, it is important that you have a topic and goals in mind as you search for materials. It is also helpful if you have a main text to work with in these lessons, and often the main text is the textbook. The intent of this unit is to find material to supplement, to augment, to enhance, to bring to life the topic that you are teaching so that your students will come away with deeper understanding of the material. In some cases, if needed, these searches can result in main texts that you would use for your lessons, but I stress again that you must know what you are trying to teach to be able to find material that you could use.

Look at the Materials Review Example (previous post) for what you are to submit on your blog. The example presents two sites that I found that present material about Anne Bonney and Mary Reid, two women pirates who masqueraded as men. I decided to use both of these sites as resources because there is a difference in how they discuss what happened to these two pirates, and I want to focus on this discrepancy. Note, however, that you are not required to use more than one source–use what makes sense for the lesson you are planning. For other parts of the pirate lesson, I will find material about other pirates (e.g., Black Beard) and those could be different posts on my blog for Unit 2 materials. I also found an interesting site about pirate flags that I would use in a materials post.

If you run into problems or unsure about your topic, please email us.

Woody Trathen and Omer Ari

Materials Review Example

I have selected 8th grade social studies: Creation and development of North Carolina. Specifically, I have chosen the colonial period as the focus of the lessons/unit–the development of North Carolina and the colonies prior to the Revolutionary War. In particular, I will exam the role of piracy and specific pirates in the economic and social development of the region. I will be looking for material about specific pirates that lived during this period.

1. Name of Site:

• Anne Bonney and Mary Read, the Pirate Queens.
• 18th Century Women Pirates: Anne Bonney and Mary Read

2. Link to Resources:

• http://www.bonney-readkrewe.com/legend.html
• http://www.essortment.com/all/pirateswomen_rzzx.htm

3. Source:

• Krewe of Bonney Read
• Essortment, high quality free information

4. Identify the teaching topic of the materials–be specific. Identify the population of the students (grade, course):

• These texts supply a brief history of Anne Bonney and Mary Read, two female pirates who masqueraded as men and sailed with the famous pirate Calico Jack. These texts will be part of a larger unit on pirates and their role in the development of the American colonies. The unit is part of a 8th grade social studies unit, but will include activities for language arts.

5. Give a brief description of how the materials would be used:

• I will have students form groups, based on their interest in specific pirates. These texts will be used for the group interested in the female pirates Anne Bonney and Mary Read. I will have focused questions that will guide students through this material. They will read both of these texts and complete the data retrieval chart that I will construct. Other groups will do the same with other texts for different pirates. So, these two texts serve as one place where students will gather information about these two female pirates.
• In particular, the two texts offer two different views of the final demise, or not, of these two pirates. This will provide an opportunity to discuss sources, primary and secondary (of which these are an example). I will ask the students to consider how they might find additional sources to help them decide which account is most trustworthy. Ultimately students will construct PowerPoint presentations that summarize key information about these pirates—these will be presented to other students.

6. Identify other material that you could use with this material to augment instruction, especially for EC students:

• I will also have available the easy to read book, The Pirate Trial of Anne Bonny and Mary Read by Tamara Eastman:
• http://www.amazon.com/Pirate-Trial-Anne-Bonny-Mary/dp/0965464695

• I will also use the wonderful picture book, The Ballad of the Pirate Queens by Jane Yolen and David Shannon:
• http://www.amazon.com/Ballad-Pirate-Queens-Jane-Yolen/dp/0152018859/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1234312221&sr=1-1
• This picture book is very easy to read, yet full of historic information about Anne Bonney and Mary Read. It also provides a great model for poetry.

6. Explain why you would use this material with your students. How will the material help your students learn the topic?

• These materials are engaging, easy to read, and will enable my students to research information about these pirates, who played an important role in history. I believe that this unit will encourage my students to investigate more thoroughly information about the colonial period in our history.

Woody Trathen and Omer Ari

Ending Unit 1; Beginning Unit 2

As we close in on the due date for Unit 1 assignments, I need to remind you that assignments must be completed at THE CLOSE OF THE DAY on Friday, September 11. So you have this coming Tuesday through Friday to finish up, including commenting. To see how many comments you have made, you can look at your dashboard—your blog activities are listed and you can check under the comment button. Remember to look at the check sheet for how many comments are expected.

Unit 2

The focus of Unit 2 is for you to find alternative texts (including visual) to accompany a future lesson that you might teach. Texts will be material you find from the resources provided. So you will be looking for Web sites that students will read and research, perhaps electronic texts, photographs, videos, picture books, easy readers of content you are teaching, etc.; I also include books on the list as resources.

You will need to have a specific lesson, or several lessons in mind as you look for these materials. Middle grades students you will need to select a topic in one of your content areas. Science will be easier than mathematics as a focus for these assignments. Make sure you look at the previous post (NCSCOS Instructions and Example)  for help on this. English Language Arts majors: think in terms of grade-level lessons, perhaps an author or a particular book, or skill (a little harder to do). Social Studies majors will use the social studies curriculum to provide the topic (e.g., WWII, Civil War, American Revolution, Colonial Period in North Carolina, Euro-Asia History, Russian Revolution, etc.) This would provide the focus for your materials–consult the grade level topics in the curriculum.

Allow yourself some time to just look at the resources that are available. There are many. Make sure you check out SAS Materials. These materials are free to teachers in North Carolina; the are very rich and comprehensive.

There are two articles that you will read in Unit 2 (the first one has two parts to it) that will provide an example of the kind of lessons I am encouraging you to develop. These lessons were designed and carried out in a 4th-grade classroom, but is easily adapted to middle grades and other topics. The second is about using blogs and similar tools in teaching.

Remember to view the check sheet to see all of the specific assignments for these units.

Email us with questions and be mindful of the deadlines.

Woody Trathen and Omer Ari

NCSCOS Instructions and Example

Instructions and Examples

for NCSCOS Worksheet

The assignment to find a topic and standards from the North Carolina curriculum requires you to visit the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction Web site and locate the appropriate curriculum and other resources that are available to you. You will need to select a grade level to work with and a topic to teach. Then, find curriculum standards and copy paste them into the worksheet that you download; save this Word document and email as an attachment back to trathenwr@appstate.edu.

English Language Arts: The English language arts curriculum objectives are rather general and focused more on skill development than literary topic, but in reality the curriculum is both topic and skill. Copy the objectives from the 2004 curriculum:

http://www.ncpublicschools.org/curriculum/languagearts/scos/2004/

When looking for specific material to use to address the skills, it is helpful to look at the content of a reading and language arts program (use this to help you select material):

http://www.ncpublicschools.org/curriculum/languagearts/scos/2004/39appendixd

Social Studies: The social studies curriculum is organized by topic covered at grade level:

http://www.ncpublicschools.org/curriculum/socialstudies/scos/

Science: The science curriculum can be found here:

http://www.ncpublicschools.org/curriculum/science/scos/

But you will also want to look carefully at the K-12 curriculum units, where you will select a topic to teach.

http://www.ncpublicschools.org/curriculum/science/units/

You may select the objectives from either set of resources.

Mathematics: The Mathematics standards are in transition to essential standards that take effect 2010/2011. These should be the standards you use in mathematics, but they are currently in draft form. I would suggest that perhaps you use your other focus area instead for this class. However, if you want the challenge to work with these new standards, you can work with them. See the drafts of essential standards:

http://community.learnnc.org/dpi/math/archives/2009/02/essential_stand.php

_______________________________________________________________

For all of these content areas, you can simply copy and paste the appropriate objectives into the worksheet. Here is an example:

Name: Woody Trathen

Identify the subject area on the NC Standard Course of Study that you will use to complete assignments for this course:

SOCIAL STUDIES

EIGHTH GRADE NORTH CAROLINA: CREATION AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE STATE

Identify the main topics that you would teach:

I will focus on the colonial period—the development of North Carolina and the colonies prior to the Revolutionary War. In particular, I will exam the role of piracy in the economic and social development of the region. Black Beard, whose ship is being recovered off the coast of North Carolina, will receive special attention.

Copy and past the key objectives from the standard course of study that you will address in the assignments:

Competency Goal 1 The learner will analyze important geographic, political, economic, and social aspects of life in the region prior to the Revolutionary Period.

Objectives

1.01 Assess the impact of geography on the settlement and developing economy of the Carolina colony.

1.03 Compare and contrast the relative importance of differing economic, geographic, religious, and political motives for European exploration.

1.05 Describe the factors that led to the founding and settlement of the American colonies including religious persecution, economic opportunity, adventure, and forced migration.

1.07 Describe the roles and contributions of diverse groups, such as American Indians, African Americans, European immigrants, landed gentry, tradesmen, and small farmers to everyday life in colonial North Carolina, and compare them to the other colonies.

Blogging: Detailed Instructions and Videos

Creating Your Blog and Other Blogging Instructions

Fist, set up a gmail account.

Then, create a blog with WordPress.com following the instructions below.

Go to http://wordpress.com/ and click Sign Up Now!
Fill in the information (write down username and password)
. Click “Gimme a blog.”

Signing up with WordPress.com-Video

• http://wordpress.tv/2009/01/05/signing-up-with-wordpresscom/

Next, name your blog with your first and last name.
 Sign-up.
 Close window after reading.

Go to your e-mail and look for the message from WordPress.com.

Click the link in the e-mail to activate your account. Write down or copy into a document the user name and password, so you can find it later.
 You will get another message from WordPress.com with important account information—save this message.

Go to WordPress.com (http://wordpress.com/) and login (Already Hip)
Find Your blog: name of your blog; click on it.
 You will be looking at your dashboard;

From here you will have to take time to experiment and check things out. Read the help in the e-mail you saved and the hints on the page.

Click Visit Site to view your blog.

Copy the address of this site that appears in the url window. Use the curser to click on the address until it turns blue, then copy the address (you can use the edit menu or right click button).

Go to your e-mail, send an e-mail to me (trathenwr@appstate.edu) and in the message paste the url address of your blog that you just copied.

Make sure you sign your name and send this to me. I will need this address to put your blog site on our BlogRoll Feed page. When I get it set up, I will e-mail you confirmation. At that point go check to see if your blog is showing up. If not, let me know.

An Introduction to Your Dashboard- Video

• http://wordpress.tv/2009/01/05/the-wordpresscom-dashboard-introduction/

Now you are ready to set up the Design of your blog. Everything is located on your dashboard on the left side of the page. Click  on Appearance to change the themes of your blog.

Previewing and Activating Themes–Video

• http://wordpress.tv/2009/01/14/previewing-and-activating-themes-2/

I would like for each of you to start by drafting your autobiographical introduction.  Please see examples of your instructors. See autobiographical introduction for Woodrow Trathen and for Omer Ari.

WRITING A POST or a PAGE–Video

Check out these videos for help!

• http://wordpress.tv/2009/01/14/adding-an-about-me-or-any-other-static-page/
• http://wordpress.tv/2009/01/15/writing-and-publishing-a-post/

Go to WordPress.com (http://wordpress.com/) and login (already hip)

Find Your blogs: name of your blog; click on it.
You will be looking at your dashboard;

Look on the left side of your blog and click on Pages and then Add New. OR, if you would like to write a post, instead of a page, please click on Post. And then you would click ADD New.

Enter the title.

Write your text in the white area, or write your text in Word (do spell check) then copy and paste it into the text area. When you are ready to publish your page or post,

Click  Blue Publish button on the right.

Go to your blog and see if it is posted.

Commenting to a blog post with WordPress.com

Find a blog you want to read and send comment.

Click on the blog title.

You should be able to read the post and comment in the reply box.

Leave a Reply

Write your comment in the text area, or write your text in Word (do spell check) then copy and paste it into the text area.

Sign your name (this is very important for me to give you credit for your comments)

Push Submit Comment button.

For the comments to appear on the post, the owner of the blog must first approve the comments.

Embedding Photos or Media into Your Posts-Video

• http://wordpress.tv/2009/01/05/embedding-photos-video-audio-into-your-posts/

For many VIDEO TUTORIALS, check out:

http://wordpress.tv/category/how-to/

Happy blogging!

Child Friendly/Safe Web Sites

Make sure you know about web resources that have been designed for children to use. Here are a few:

http://kidskonnect.com/

http://kids.yahoo.com/

http://kids.discovery.com/

http://www.google.com/Top/Kids_and_Teens/

http://cybersleuth-kids.com/

http://www.ask.com/

http://www.discoveryeducation.com/
Password code 9B68-F4B9, then set up an account

Also, check CAROL Links/Search Engines for more resources:
http://www.ltl.appstate.edu/carol/links/c_l_search_engines.htm
Woody Trathen

Posting Video Into Your Blog

Follow the instructions on the help menu–the instructions vary depending on the source of the video.

Let’s say you find a video on YouTube.com that you want to use for instruction. There are two methods for capturing this video and posting it to your blog.

One method is to simply copy the URL address of the YouTube video and click the Add media: video icon when you are writing a post. Hit return (enter). Then save and publish the post. For example, math lessons:

The other method you copy the code in the Embed: bar on the YouTube site and then simply paste that into the text section of your video. Hit return (enter). Then it shows up like this after you publish and save your post.

And here is another one we found about physics.