Part I. Introduce The Unit, Identify, and Describe The Learning Needs of Your Class
Part I. Introduce The Unit, Identify, and Describe The Learning Needs of Your Class
For the unit analysis assignment, I will be modifying and teaching a week of the Harcourt Trophies series for kindergarten at Northeast Elementary Magnet School in Danville, IL. This unit is part of a curriculum that is currently used throughout the school, but no longer in the district. The Danville School District 118 is currently implementing Saxon Phonics throughout the school district to replace Harcourt Trophies. More specifically, the unit that I will be teaching is Theme 9: Week 3 of curriculum. The unit is themed around the community, which is an important topic for kindergartners to begin to develop. Throughout this unit students will focus on the short vowel /e/, as well as blending /e/ /t/ in words. According to the current unit lesson plans, students will be developing this skill through various phonemic awareness exercises, shared literature, decodable books, and writing activities. After discussing this unit with my cooperating teacher, I have developed some thoughts and ideas about the unit as is. My cooperating teacher has taught this unit for years and really enjoys teaching from the Harcourt Trophies series. She is actually quite sad to see this unit leave the district and her classroom. Since my cooperating teacher does not always have enough time throughout the week to complete all lessons in the weekly plan, she has to pick and choose the most important lessons to focus on. For example, she does not usually have the opportunity to engage students in the comprehension activities, but rather does these lessons orally with the students after shared reading. Also, my cooperating teacher does not follow the morning message from the curriculum guide since she feels that they are not always applicable and relevant for the students in her classroom. Furthermore, there is not always time to do the writing prompt given in the curriculum guide. If there is time, my cooperating teacher will engage students a different
writing activity, often related to something going on in their lives. These activities include fill-inblank writing and drawing responses to a copied sentence. My cooperating teacher views that strength of the unit as 1) it is easy to follow because the materials are already prepared, 2) children are being read to daily, often with a previously read book to improve comprehension skills, and 3) it is focused around a theme that is often relevant and interesting to students. However, my cooperating teacher does see one major weakness of the unit: time. She feels that it is often a struggle to complete all required/suggested activities throughout the week, as noted above. While analyzing, planning, and implementing this unit, I will have to think about the specific learning needs of my students. In my classroom, there are currently two English Language Leaners (ELLs). One of them, T.C., immigrated to United States from China last year. She is an extremely energetic and intelligent young girl. While T.C., speaks very fluent English at school, she is still consistently exposed to the Chinese language at home. She currently receives ESL pullout services daily with the ESL teacher at Northeast. During this time, she practices a lot of phonemic awareness skills and letter sounds. My cooperating teacher makes sure she points out T.C.s unique language skills as a positive influence on other students in the classroom. T.C. is not treated as low-achieving student and is often paired by my cooperating teacher with a student who is more low-ability. I feel that in a few years, T.C. will no longer require ESL services. Like, T.C., A.G. receives ESL pullout instruction. She is a native-Spanish speaker, along with her parents. However, A.G. views herself as a native-English speaker and does not talk about her unique culture and language abilities like T.C. Unlike T.C., A.G. is not at the highest achievement level in the classroom. She is loving and nurturing to others in the classroom, and
greatly benefits from small group work. Since she is an ESL student, A.G. uses many visual resources around the classroom to aide in her spelling, such as her name plate, bulletin boards and word walls. While teaching both ESL students throughout this unit, I will need to be sure to provide visual, as well as oral instruction to meet their learning needs. In our classroom, we have several students who receive speech pathology services throughout the week, which is pullout instruction. These students rarely need modification instruction, but do need to have proper speech and sounds modeled for them. It is important to keep these students in mind while speaking and reading aloud so that they are seeing and hearing proper speech patterns throughout the day. Since this unit is themed around the idea of community, it is important to think about the community my students live in. My students experiences in Danville are probably quite different from my student experiences in Peoria and my teaching experiences in Champaign. Several of my students live in low-income housing near and around Northeast School. Because of these experiences, I feel that I should find a way to incorporate their ideas and experiences of community into the unit, as to not give just one ideal and stereotypical vision of community. This classroom students has a few students are may be considered gifted, or at least extremely bright. One student E.D., is very young and immature, but he is one of the smartest and most intelligent children in our classroom. Not only does he need his intellectual needs met by providing activities that allow him to go above and beyond the requirements, but he also needs activities and lessons that will keep him engaged and focused. However, the previous statement should be true for all lessons. Almost all students should be engaged and interested in what I am teaching throughout the unit.
Finally, there are 2-4 students that are at a much lower learning ability than the remainder of the classroom. In order to meet these students needs, my cooperating teacher does several things. When pairing, either she or myself works with the student, or the student is paired with a higher-ability student. Secondly, my cooperating teacher breaks down and repeats the instruction several times with the students before sending them off to complete the activity. I think this is extremely beneficial for students who have difficulty processing larger chunks of information at a time. Finally, she allows all students, not just the lower-ability student, to use resources around the classroom while completing activities. Students can use their nameplates, word wall, etc. to complete activities so that they experience success in the classroom. In order to meet the diverse needs and backgrounds of my students, I will need to modify several lessons throughout the unit. For example, I could chose a book for shared reading that is more culturally diverse than the one provided, allowing students to see themselves in their learning. Also, I could change writing prompts and activities to fit the individual learning needs of students. Instead of writing individually, students could complete writing activities in small groups or with a teacher. Finally, I could add lessons or activities that allow students to learn and share about the community they currently live. Overall, I will need to be sure to think about all of my students needs while planning for instruction. I need to ensure that students not only have their needs met, but that they also see themselves in their learning and the classroom.