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Showing posts from February, 2024

Week 6: Disciplinary Literacy

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  Lesson Objective: I can use the conjunction because and past tense verbs to describe weather patterns  Overview: This week, students finished up their unit on the weather. These lessons were taught during our English language Development block and students learned about different weather patterns while developing their english language proficiency skills. In the 1st grade classroom that I am a student teaching in, there are 4 students who are English language learners. Throughout this unit, I saw their ability to use past, present, and future tense verbs in verbal language expand. This lesson was the concluding lesson of the unit where we reviewed some of the weather patterns that we learned about and used past and present tense verbs to describe the weather.  Due to the fact that this is a 1st grade classroom, students were given broad explanations of weather patterns. Their primary job was to use proper language forms when describing what people were wearing and doing...

Week 5: Active Learning

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It was such a fun week in first grade social studies! This week, we concluded our unit on families near and far with a cumulative project where students had to propose an idea that would help solve a problem within our school community. This project was adapted from the InquirEd curriculum. The inquiry question for the unit was “how can we bring families together to form stronger communities”. For my group of students, it made the most sense for us  to concentrate on solving a problem within our school community- so this is what we did. Students used the knowledge that they have obtained throughout the unit to create a project that reflected their knowledge on how to take informed action within a community.  Ultimately, this project was a service learning experience. A service learning experience “focuses on student learning a process for activism in the community,” which students did through conducting this project. This type of learning “engages students in problem based lea...

Week 4: Inclusive Planning and Instruction

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  As I reflect on the content that was provided, I can see how my mentor teacher incorporates the UDL framework into her lessons daily. According to the IRIS Center (2024), The Universal Design for Learning model is “a lens through which educators design instruction that allows students a variety of ways to access content, engage with instruction, and demonstrate their learning”. Through this model, students are provided the necessary materials through multiple modalities and the way in which they show their knowledge of the subject is differentiated based on their various needs. Most importantly, this framework takes away barriers in the learning process and makes the content more accessible to all students.  In the 1st grade classroom that I am currently a student teaching in, I see this framework in action daily. Through this blog post, I will be concentrating on a writing lesson that I taught this week.  Learning objective:  This objective was explicitly stated t...

Week 3: Jan. 29th - Feb. 2nd

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This week in the 1st grade classroom that I am student teaching in, we continued our unit on "Families Near and Far" using the InquirEd curriculum. The lesson that I my mentor teacher instruct was on 'working together' and how working together can help solve problems within a community to improve it. This lesson directly related to Colorado State Standard SS1.S4.GLE1. It related back to the Colorado essential skill "recognize how members of a community rely on each other, considering personal contributions as applicable" (Colorado Department of Education, 2020). After reviewing the Colorado state standards, Common Core standards, and watching the lesson in action- it was evident that these skills were being taught.  She started off the lesson by activating students background knowledge by talking about the lesson that they had the day prior, where they discussed a conflict that was in the community and how it was solved. She defined the word conflict for stu...