TPA Task 2: Instruction Commentary Kyle Thain 1.

In the instruction seen in the clip(s), describe strategies you used to engage students in learning tasks to develop skills and strategies to comprehend or compose text. a. Cite examples of strategies aimed at engaging all your students and examples aimed at engaging specific individuals or subgroups. If you described any of these fully in the lesson plans or the planning commentary, just reference the relevant description. Working with kindergarten students requires many different ways to get attention or actively engage them. At the very beginning of the video I do a quick follow teacher game where I clap and touch my nose. This gives students something to do and it is an effective way to gain 100 percent participation. I can easily see who is and is not following me. This is a way to get students to focus on the teacher and it is a good segway into a lesson. I then stated the carpet expectations by saying listening position in 3,2,1. In between the numbers of the countdown I stated what listening position is, hands folded, legs crossed, and eyes on teacher. This strategy is a must do before each activity because students need to know what is expected of them at all times. I specifically chose to have each student feel the two containers. I did this so everyone would have a chance to participate. One of the objectives of this lesson was for students to understand that weight is the measure of the heaviness of an object. I wanted them to actually feel the difference in weights of the objects then see the results on the scale. I could have just had them look at the objects and make a prediction about which one was heavier but I thought that adding in the sense of touch to the learning would be beneficial. The strategy that I used to engage individual students happened before the lesson so it is not on the video. I have four students who are on individual behavior plans that I conferenced with prior to the lesson. This has to be done before every lesson and is my chance to individually tell them the expectations and what they need to do to be successful. b. How did these strategies reflect students academic or language development, social/emotional development, or cultural and lived experiences? Where my students are with their language development is a driving force behind my teaching. They do not have the ability to process large amounts of text or verbal information at once. Using nonverbal attention signals such as a follow teacher game

allows students to regain their focus without having to process a speech by a teacher about why they should be focusing. At this point in their academic career my students to not have much exposure to measurement. Not all of my students can look at two objects and state which one looks heavier. That is why i had them feel for themselves. 2. Cite examples of language supports seen in the clip(s) to help your students understand that content and/or participate in literacy discourse central to the lesson. a. How did these strategies reflect students varying language proficiencies and promote their language development? As stated in my planning commentary I try to use as much academic language as possible with my students. The language support that I used in this lesson was using advanced vocabulary to expose my students to new words. I used words such as observation, measurement, weight, and scale. By using them in context in real time my students were able to understand the words that I used. This strategy promotes students language development by exposure to rich language. As in any classroom I have students at different levels of language proficiency. For the students that are at lower levels and all levels I also try to restate the word using their language. For example when I asked students to make observations about the objects I re stated that in their language. I told them to be thinking in their brains about what they notice. 3. Describe strategies for eliciting student thinking and how your ongoing responses further their learning. Cite examples from the clip(s). A strategy that I believe is very important to use with young children is teaching them how to think. In a social skills program called second step that we teach daily the students are taught how to use self talk or think inside your head. In my lesson I used this strategy. While the students were observing the two containers I told them what they should be thinking about. I told them to make observations about the different containers. 4. Reflection a. Reflect on students learning of concepts and academic language as featured in the video clip(s). Identify both successes and missed opportunities for monitoring all students learning and for building their own understanding of skills and strategies for comprehending and/or composing text. I thought that passing around the containers went well. The students were able to make the physical connection with what weight is and which container was heavier. A missed opportunity was not having some sort of chart. I think it would have been beneficial to have a chart with the academic language on it. I should have had definitions for weight

and scale. Something else that I should have done was have the students restate the objective in their own words. I should have asked, what is the measurement of the heaviness of an object? The students could have answered and repeated , weight. It is important to note that the section of the lesson that is in the video is just an intro to weight. It is not a full blown lesson. The measurement portion of the lesson that is shown in the video is only half of the lesson. The other part is a lesson on number recognition. Due to the way that our math curriculum is set up we merged two lessons into one to save time.

b. If you could do it over, what might you have done to take advantage of missed opportunities or to improve the learning of students with diverse learning needs and characteristics? If I were to teach this lesson again I would not have tried to merge the two lessons. I would have done it in a way that allowed for a deeper experience with measurement. I would have many different objects ready to be weighed. I would have given each student two different objects and asked them to predict which would be heavier. Then we would weigh them as a class to see if their predictions were correct.