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ELEMENTARY UNIT/ LESSON PLANNING COMMENTARY

Your Name: Jason Kawana
Date: 2/19/14
Unit/Lesson Title: Neighborhoods/ Day 3 ELD
Grade Level and Content Area: Kindergarten/ Language Development
Number of Students 27
Total Amount of Time: 35min
1. Learning Goals/Standards: What concepts, essential questions or key skills will be your focus? What do
you want your students to know at the end of this unit/lesson? Students will be focusing on learning
jobs of workers in their communities. They will also be working on high frequency words you
are for!" #honics and #honemic awareness.
$. %ationale: Why is this content important for your students to learn and how does it promote social justice?
&t's im#ortant for students to learn about their communities and the workers there in order to
become aware of the many things that their communities ha(e to offer. They can learn about
these workers and become familiar with them in order to think of occu#ations to ha(e in the
future. They need to learn high frequency words" #honemic awareness and #honics in order to
build fluency for reading. Students need to build fluency skills in order to #re#are for success in
their future schooling careers.
3. Identifying and supporting language needs: What are the language demands of the unit/lesson? How do
you plan to support students in meeting their English language development needs including academic
language!? & will be su##orting )nglish Language *e(elo#ment needs by using #ictures and matching
#rint with them as well. & also will be describing and scaffolding new information and (ocabulary that
these students might not be familiar with. +y #ointing to #ictures of these as well it #uts a concrete idea
into students minds about what these words mean.
,. -ccessing #rior knowledge and building u#on students' backgrounds" interests and needs: How do
your choices of instructional strategies, materials and sequence of learning tasks connect with your students"
backgrounds, interests, and needs? Students will be using their #rior knowledge when we will be reading
our big content book about workers. Some of the workers that we will be reading about are workers they
come across e(en at school. Students will be using their information they ha(e just learned in order to
#artici#ate in a game that uses descri#tions of workers to come to a conclusion about what worker is
#laced on their back. They will be using both information they ha(e learned and information they ha(e
e.#erienced from life.
/. -ccommodations: What accommodations or support will you use for all students including English
#anguage #earners and students with special educational needs, i$e$ %&'E students and students
with (E)"s!? E*plain how these features of your learning and assessment tasks will provide all
students access to the curriculum and allow them to demonstrate their learning$ -ll learners will
be able to engage in the learning because there will be scaffolding as well as many #ictures
linking oral language to #rint. Students can be challenged through the acti(ities that we will
be doing regarding guessing which worker we are describing.
2013-2014
0. Theory: Which theories support your unit/lesson plan? e*plain the connections! & will be using
sociocultural theory during this lesson because & will be using students #rior knowledge from
#ast e.#eriences in order to learn not only about workers in their community but also about the
lessons from )nglish language de(elo#ment. Students will also be hel#ing one another learn by
talking about their e.#eriences" which is #art of the sociocultural theory as well.
7. Reflection: (answer the following questions after the teaching of this unit/lesson) What do you feel was
successful in your lesson and why? If you could go back and teach this learning segment again to the same
group of students, what would you do differently in relation to planning, instruction, and assessment? How
could the changes improve the learning of students with different needs and characteristics? I think that
initially I was very nervous that the students wouldnt understand the activity and how you cant just
give away who the worker was so easily. After scaffolding and practicing with the students I think that
the lesson went really well. Students practiced by giving my the characteristics or the clothing that the
workers wore and then we compiled a list that we were able to use for describing the characters to the
student who was trying to decide who they had. The first round was pretty rough as the students just
blurted out the name of the worker but further scaffolding and demonstration allowed the students to
understand the activity more and we had no problems. Students were able to describe through words and
descriptions who the student was and who they were looking for.
**COMMENTARY IS REQUIRED FOR ALL UCLA ELEMENTARY FORMAL OBSERVATIONS **
2013-2014