Lesson Sequence

10% of course grade

Goals

The purposes of this assignment are to

o think through exactly how to teach reading comprehension

o practice developing (or adapting one of Beers's) before-, during, and after-reading activities

Assignment

Show how you will teach reading comprehension of a major portion in your unit, writing a "lesson sequence" of five lessons. A "lesson" isn't necessarily one class period, at least not the way we're using the term for this project. A "lesson" is a text that you are using in your unit, a text that your students will need to read and comprehend. For example, you may have a lesson on each of the first five chapters of Frankenstein. Or five lessons on a poem, a short story, and the first three chapters of Perks of a Wallflower. Your texts don't have to be taken consecutively from your unit; choose the ones you want.

Each lesson will include

o before-, during-, and after-reading activities

o discussion types (including silent discussion, Socratic circles, ...)

o reading types (teacher, popcorn, audio-books/professional readers, small-group reading silently or aloud using Say SomethingYou will probably get most of your activities from Beers (which would include variations of the ones we did in class AND any others that Beers discusses that we didn't do in class), but you are also free to generate your own (e.g., have students write dense questions after-reading; from these will come you draw for the final essay exam.)

More details

>You don't have to have more than one before-, during-, and after-reading activity per lesson, although you probably will.

>You may use an activity more than once, but you do need to show some range across the five lessons--to show me your chops as teachers of reading and to mix it up a bit for students.

>Once again, we'll use our trusty wikispaces to post our Lesson Sequences, although we won't be workshopping this assignment, nor will I be providing feedback before final grading.

>And do use the Horizontal Rule button in the toolbar to mark off each lesson.

Due Date

See calendar

Rubric

Your holistic letter grade will be based on these criteria:

1. You demonstrate your mastery of a range of activities; you understand the activity (e.g., you don't say things like "think-aloud while reading silently"); you refer to the activity by its correct name; you clearly understand the concept behind the activity.

2. Your choice of activity fits the text genre for each lesson.

3. You include more than one class discussion type other than whole-class discussion (e.g., silent discussion, Socratic seminars, small-group/report out, etc.)

4. Your activities focus on teaching the strategies behind reading comprehension, not New Critical literary analysis. (So avoid activities with worksheets about characters, setting, etc.)

Model

Okay. Here's an example of what ONE "lesson" looks like. Remember: you need to generate FIVE of these, total.

Lesson Sequence for

Unit on Relationships

Lesson 1 "Teddy"

Before-reading activities

1. (students) Quickwrite (5 minutes)

· What qualities does a good teacher have?

· share responses in small groups of 3-4

· report out to whole class a common response from each group

2. (teacher) Think-aloud for first three paragraphs of "Teddy"

During-reading activities

1. (students) Say Something/Sticky Notes: as you read "Teddy," stop at least twice on every page, and "say something" on post-it notes for a total of 6 sticky notes for the story.

2. (students) Share sticky notes (small groups of 3-4; teacher circulating around to each group). What kind of comments did you most often make (e.g., making a prediction, asking a question, clarifying something, making a connection)? Compare your notes, and respond to each other's sticky notes orally.

After-reading activities

1. Socratic seminar (student-led; 30 minutes; no more than 3 turns each; at least 1 turn per student): Is Mrs. Stoppard a good teacher?

___________________________________________

Lesson 2 "Another Text"

Before-reading activities

During-reading activities

After-reading activities

___________________________________________

Lesson 3 "Another Text"

Before-reading activities

During-reading activities

After-reading activities

___________________________________________

Lesson 4 "Another Text"

Before-reading activities

During-reading activities

After-reading activities

___________________________________________

Lesson 5 "Another Text"

Before-reading activities

During-reading activities

After-reading activities