Leslie Whitelaw's Professional Portfolio



Leslie WhitelawApril 7, 2013EDU 723: Teaching and Learning in Inclusion SettingsUniversity of New EnglandDifferentiated Lesson Plan Description of StudentsThis is a classroom of ten high school students with mild to moderate disabilities. Nine children have intellectual disabilities and one has autism and cerebral palsy. Ages range from fourteen to eighteen and writing abilities range from kindergarten to second grade. Val requires the use of her “Alpha Smarts” for writing activities.Jim is easily distracted and requires frequent reminders to stay on task.There are two para-educators that support the students all day. Explanation of Instructional decisionsStudents are grouped by ability levels. These groups were established by assessment of their writing skills at the beginning of the year as well as their Individual Education Plan goals and objectives. The groups are flexible. Students move up to a more challenging group, or if that is too much of a jump supplemental materials can be added to challenge a student while they stay in the same group. Lesson planLesson objective: Students will be able to:Write words, sentences and paragraphs legibly and with proper spacing.Write sentences and paragraphs considering an audience and developing a central idea.Standards:CCSS- ELA- 1.0Writing Strategies First GradeStudents write clear and coherent sentences and paragraphs that develop a central idea. Their writing shows they consider the audience and purpose. Students progress through the stages of the writing process (e.g., prewriting, drafting, and revising, editing successive versions).Organization and Focus 1.1 Select a focus when writing. 1.2 Use descriptive words when writing.Penmanship 1.3 Print legibly and space letters, words, and sentences appropriately.IEP Goal: Given a written/verbal prompt student will be able to write cvc words/simple sentences/3 to 5 sentence paragraph. Procedures - OpeningWarm up on board-Large group instructionReview- What is a sentence? Ask for ideas (brainstorm). Remind students that a sentence is a group of words that tells a complete idea. It must have a person, place, or thing and an action word to make it a sentence. Give an example - The puppy ran to the car. Puppy is the thing and ran is the action word. Play “is this a sentence?” until each student has had a turn. Vary difficulty by student ability level. Put questions on board to help visual learners. Explain that today everyone will be writing about things or people they know about. Some students will be writing sentences and others will be writing paragraphs.Explain that writing is an important way to let people know what you are thinking.Small group work - Move students into their assigned groups. Group one will be working with the para-educator and teacher. Karen and Jim will be writing 5 simple sentences. Val will write 5 simple sentences using her Alpha Smarts. Mara will write two simple sentences. Students will review again what a sentence is. In front of them will be a white board with the following categories written on it – name/place /thing and action/doing word.Students will brainstorm words that go into each category. The teacher will write down student s’ responses.Next, students will fill out the following worksheet using the words from the whiteboards or words of their own to complete the sentences:Add words to each word group below to make sentences:1. My teacher told me to_________________________2. I can___________________.3. After school my family will __________________________.4. I like to ______________________.5. I can’t wait until______________________When the students are finished with the worksheet they will read their sentences to each other.Finally, they will write their five simple sentences independently. These will be rough drafts that will be finished the next day on the computer.Groups two and three- Sam and Gabe will be in group two and Sarah and Mark in group three.State -You have been writing sentences in your journals. Now you are going to learn how to connect these sentences to make a paragraph. A paragraph is a group of sentences that tells about one idea. A paragraph has at least three sentences. An easy way to write a paragraph is to answer questions. When you write a few sentences about the same thing, you’ll soon have a paragraph.Have Sarah and Mark brainstorm together to answer the following questions about a helpful robot: 1. What is your robot’s name?2. What does your robot look like?3. Where does your robot live?4. How does the robot help you?5. What other things can your robot do?6. Do you share your robot with others?Sam and Gabe will write three sentence paragraphs and Sarah and Mark will write five sentence paragraphs.Modify the worksheet assignment for Sam and Gabe. They will work together to answer the following questions:1. What is your robot’s name? 2. Where does your robot live?3. Do you share your robot with others?Discuss why putting these sentences together makes it a paragraph – (same topic, Beginning, middle, end, etc.).Next, both groups will create their own paragraphs. Students will brainstorm ideas for their paragraphs. Give example of possible topics of interest such as pets, family, and sports.Students will write their paragraphs independently. Para will support students as needed. These paragraphs will be rough drafts that will be finished the next day on the computer.Teacher will monitor all three groups and answer any questions.Materials- sentence activity work sheet for group one“Robot” worksheet for group two with three questions to answer.“Robot” worksheet for group three with five questions to answer. markers white boardsEvaluation- collect work samples/print out Val’s work from Alpha Smarts and look for following elements:Sally, Jim, Val and Mara have worksheets completed correctly: Five simple sentences completed correctly – contain person place or thing and an action. Words spaced correctly and legiblely. Words spelled correctly. Correct punctuation.Mara has two correctly completed simple sentences:Sentences contains person place or thing and an action. Words placed correctly and legibly. Words spelled correctly.Sarah and Mark: Worksheets have complete sentences, are legible, spelled and punctuated correctly. Paragraphs with five sentences have one topic and contain a beginning, middle and end.Sam and Gabe: Work sheets have complete sentences, are legible, spelled and punctuated correctly. Paragraphs with three sentences have one topic and contain a beginning, middle and end.Special considerations for students with disabilitiesWhiteboards (easier than copying from board.)Opportunities to brain storm, work in pairsStudent copies of work sheetsPara- educator guidance and modeling.Assistive writing device Alpha SmartsComputers to complete writing activityReflectionIn the past I introduced sentence and paragraph writing in less formal and structured ways during small group and individual reading times. I instructed my para-professionals to use various worksheets to help the students write their sentences and paragraphs. When students responded to writing prompts in their journals they were taught to write what happened first, next and last when constructing their paragraphs. This initially taught the students how to write a paragraph, but they were never successful in being able to fade this support. With my emerging reading/writing students (group one) I directly teach them to write sentences in a manner similar to the way I wrote about it in this lesson plan. It works well; therefore I did not change the format much for this group when I delivered my lesson. However, I was frustrated that I could not more directly teach the other two groups and had to rely on my paraprofessionals to do it for me. Because I was not happy with the results I decided to have all of us start out as a whole group in order for everyone to understand what was expected of them. The outcome of the lesson was much better than I anticipated due to the increased structure and my ability to monitor the groups more closely. Because I was only monitoring two groups with different content rather than three I was better able to guide the students and para-professionals on what I wanted the finished products to look like. One challenge I did not plan for was that groups two and three wanted to answer all of the questions during the large group instruction time. Frequently the students did not wait for the student I had called on to answer. When I teach this lesson again I will give explicit directions stating that everyone will be called on to answer questions and that even if you know the answer you must wait and let the person I call on to answer first. If that person is having trouble, I will then give someone else a chance to help.While pleased with the progress group one made in learning how to write sentences, I hope that in the future these students will learn how to create them without the “crutch” of using a word box. I believe this will be possible once they have had plenty of practice. Overall I feel that the lesson was successful and that all of the students now have a better grasp of how to create sentences and paragraphs.Group one worksheetAdd words to each word group below to make sentences:1. My teacher told me to_________________________2. I can___________________.3. After school my family will __________________________.4. I like to ______________________.5. I can’t wait until______________________Groups Two and Three Worksheet ReferencesRemedia publications, 1990. Skillkeepers language arts basic skills review. ................
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