Cross-Disciplinary Content Standards-Based Lesson

Topic: Animal Adaption*
Grade 4; English Language Development & Science

Content Area Standards:
California English Language Arts
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.4.1
Refer to details and examples in a text when explaining what the text says explicitly and when drawing inferences from the text.

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.4.9
Integrate information from two texts on the same topic in order to write or speak about the subject knowledgeably.

English Language Development
SL.4.1, 6; L.4.1,3,6
Exchange information and ideas with others through oral collaborative discussions on a range of social and academic topics

W.4.1-10; L.4.1-3,6

Writing literary and informational texts to present, describe, and explain ideas and information, using appropriate technology

California Science Content 
LS.3.a-b
3. Living organisms depend on one another and on their environment for survival. As a basis for understanding this concept:
a. Students know ecosystems can be characterized by living and nonliving components.
b. Students know that in any particular environment, some kinds of plants and animals survive well, and some survive less well, and some cannot survive at all.

Learning Outcomes:

• Students will relate characteristics and behavior of animals to their environment
• Students will determine the behavior and body structure that have specific growth and survival functions
• Students will evaluate living and nonliving things that affect animals in their environment

Materials:
Pre-activity: photos of various animals and environments
Bird adaptation activity: paper plates, pliers, tweezers, chopsticks, spoons, clothespins, bird seeds, pasta, rice, cereal
Copies of chart worksheet for adaptation activity
Class set of Stone Fox by John Reynolds Gardiner
Animal adaptation research: 5"x7" index cards with copies of rubric to assess index cards, access to Internet/computerlab

Pre-Assessment:
Students will be shown various photos of animals and environments on the white board or SmartBoard. They will match the animals to the environment accordingly and discuss with their partners why they made their conclusions.

Activities:
Bird Adaptation Activity
Students will be organized into heterogeneous groups of four. Before their experiment, students will discuss among themselves, and brainstorm and draw the different shapes of beaks while the teacher poses the question "Why are there different shapes of beaks?". For the experiment, students will fill out their chart table with the tools, materials, and their observations as they use the different tools to pick up the foods. Findings will be shared and discussed with the whole class; open-ended questions will be independently completed at the end of the experiment, below the chart table.

Stone Fox Text Reference
Using the chapter book, students will go back and make connections between the bird adaptions and the Samoyed dogs that are mentioned in the story. Students will be instructed to use the text as reference to identify and describe at least three adaptations of the dogs.

Collaborative Animal Adaptation Research
Students will be assigned in pairs and will be given an animal to research. On an index card and using appropriate technology resources, partners will record the animal behavior and structural characteristics in relation to its habitat. Their findings will be shared in a short presentation of about 3-5 minutes with a drawing or diagram.

Vocabulary: environment, adaptations, body structure, survival, behavior, habitat

Post Assessment:

• Teacher will use open-ended questions to check for student understanding of animal adaptation.
• Teacher will use teacher-made rubric to assess research content of animal behavior and structural characteristics.
• Teacher will verify student understanding of animal adaption through citation of text passages from Stone Fox.

Teaching Reflection:
In collaborating with other teachers and colleagues, there may be different approaches to introduce the lesson or different questions to pose for the students. From another perspective, activities can be altered to address other learning styles that weren't considered before.

Source:
*http://www.learnnc.org/lp/pages/2852?ref=search

MAT671 Applied Best Strategies in Classroom Instruction

Reflection on Teaching Diverse Learners

Not only has diversity become a norm within the classroom among our students, we should expect that diversity will continue to grow. As each student enters the classroom with unique cultural and linguistic backgrounds and personal experiences, it is important to regard them respectfully as individuals and address their individual learning needs. To best teach diverse learners, I believe best practices in the classroom should include:

Differentiated Instruction
A new topic, lesson, or unit should always be introduced with clarity so that students understand the purpose and learning goals of it. As there are different types learners (visual, kinesthetic, audio, etc.), content materials should be varied in form to achieve optimal student learning and mastery of objectives/goals. Students come with so many different perspectives and experiences of their own, building meaningful connection based on their personal experiences will help them process the new information/material better.

Feedback and Student Accountability
Teacher feedback is also crucial for student learning; to address the diverse learning needs, feedback should be specific to the students' capabilities and learning style.  Because not all students learn at the same pace, they should be given opportunities to be active in their learning process. Through reflection and self-checkpoints, students can be held accountable for their own learning progress by monitoring their own projects and work, and to better understand their learning strengths and areas of improvement.

Project-Based Learning
Project-based learning can be a very effective strategy in developing students' critical thinking skills, making connection to the real world, and providing meaningful purpose to what they are learning. Through projects and group work, students will face decision-making as well as accountability amongst themselves. In collaboration, students can gain more awareness of their individual talents and have the chance to make significant contributions.

Beginning Differentiation

Differentiation of instruction within a classroom begins with providing various forms of content presentation as well as implementing different learning activities to supplement and reinforce the new content.

English Language Learners:
Many ways to different content for English Language Learners include using varied supplementary materials, advanced/note-taking organizers, and leveling questions, and providing different levels of explanations.

Content Presentation:

Using varied supplementary materials may benefit English Language Learners because the content can be organized and presented in a way that can be processed easier. Supplementary materials can include adapted text where the content is broken down into smaller chunks and is less demanding in terms of readability and specific terminology. Also, supplementary materials can include manipulatives that can be used for demonstrations or applications to further support a concept--such as using tangrams or gumdrops and toothpicks to help students understand shapes and geometry.

Structuring advanced or note-taking organizers for student may also help them process the content easier as the new information is divided into comprehensible chunks and categories. As an example, in analyzing the components of persuasive writing, English Language Learners can complete a chart that breaks down the main components of a strong persuasive writing (opinion>reasons>details/examples).

Leveling questions and providing different levels of explanations appropriately addresses the student's pace of learn and abilities. For example, in teaching about ecosystem, questions can be structured to allow students in the preproduction stage of English proficiency to actively listen and use nonverbal gestures, like pointing ("Where is the canopy/forest floor/etc. in the forest ecosystem?"). For students within the early production stage of English proficiency, questions ("Who.../What.../Where...") can be structured to allow them to answer in words or phrases. To appropriately address the learning stages of students in intermediate fluency and advanced, questions should target for comprehension and responses in complete sentences with native-like proficiency and fluency.

Learning Activities:

Integrating physical/hands-on activities into learning activities can help English Language Learners to make connections with new information. In discussing and analyzing certain events in history or genres of literature, students can work in groups to create a skit to demonstrate the key actions or events of historical figures/plot. In reading Shakespeare, students can demonstrate comprehension of the content through acting out the scenes of Macbeth to show the character's key thoughts, emotions and actions that contributes to the conflict and plot of the overall play. For learning vocabulary terms (root words, biology terms, etc.), students can gather different images and pictures that associates and provides examples for better understanding of the meaning of the word.

Students with Exceptionalities:
Some methods of differentiating content for students with exceptionalities involve in preteaching, chunking, and copycatting.

Content Presentation:

Preteaching can improve student learning by giving them early exposure to familiarize them with the new topic or lesson. Teaching in detail and reviewing vocabulary terms, such as the parts of a plant, prior to a lesson may decrease the chances of confusion when students begin reading their textbooks on photosynthesis. Furthermore, activating background knowledge is another way of preteaching as it prepares and directs the students towards the relevant topic of the lesson.

Copycatting lets students become familiar to the patterns of sentences or steps of a math problems by having them copy down what the teacher writes. Chunking is another strategy where the teacher can break down a concept into more manageable steps for students; for an example, in summarizing a text, the teacher may first ask students to identify and highlight/underline the main idea and it supporting details before writing a paragraph or sentence for the summary.

Learning Activities:

Peer pairing is beneficial in learning activities as students can support and learn from each other. Students with exceptionalities can be paired with higher achieving students who can encourage, mentor, and provide modeling. On the other hand, working well with others may be one of the challenges students with exceptionalities face. Learning activities can be designed for independent participation where it involves in picture/cue cards and simple steps and directions to avoid overwhelming of senses and frustration in learning.

Advanced or Gifted Learners:
Integrating technology, offering various texts, asking deeper questions, and allowing personal goal setting can be ways to differentiate content for advanced or gifted learners.

Content Presentation:

With wider range of texts and resources (encyclopedias, maps, journal or newspaper articles, internet sources, etc.), advanced or gifted learners can have deeper access to the lesson topic or concept. Moreover, creating more challenging tasks and offering a quick learning pace for advanced learners can maintain their motivation in their learning progress.

Learning Activities:

Modification of learning activities can allow for more independent and self-reflective learning for advanced students. For example, within the unit of U.S. history and media literacy, students will be researching for three websites about the Spanish-American War by comparing and contrasting each based on a given criteria. The assignment will be modified for advanced learners where they will create their own 4-point rubric for evaluating the websites based on five or more features; furthermore, the students will find a website to exemplify each level of their rubric, providing justification for each website selected.

MAT674 Differentiated Instruction

Hello all,

I am thrilled to begin my first course towards specialization in Best Practices in teaching. I graduated from University of California, Irvine in 2013, attaining my B.S. degree in Biological Sciences and a minor in Educational Studies. My decision to teach is a result of my interest in helping and connecting with others as well as seeing students light up when they learn something new. I can't think of anything more rewarding than interacting with young minds and being a part of their personal and academic growth.

While my classroom teaching experience is limited, I have had many opportunities working with children and students through a variety of other settings, such as children's hospital volunteering, child behavioral undergraduate research, and after-school/tutoring programs. I have thoroughly enjoyed every single opportunity of being a role model and teacher to others; all of the experiences thus far has confirmed that I am undoubtedly making the best decision towards my career path. As I am nearing the completion of my Multiple Subject Teaching Credential program, I am looking forward to having my own classroom one day and to be able to work with great potential of all the young minds that I will meet in the future.

Differentiated Teaching and Learning Activities

I believe one of the most important aspects in differentiated teaching is the understanding and acceptance that every student steps into the classroom with a unique mind, background, and needs. As an aspiring teacher, I hope to provide a learning environment that nourishes the confidence and self-esteem of each individual student in their capabilities across all subject areas. Since students will demonstrate a diverse range of strengths and weaknesses, each of their strengths and talents should be acknowledged and celebrated while their weaknesses are embraced as opportunities of improvement.

From my experiences as a tutor and after-school teacher, a strategy of differentiated teaching that I always fall back on is addressing the different learning styles (visual, auditory, tactile, and kinesthetic) of my students. For each new topic or lesson that I introduce to my students, I try to provide more than one means of teaching the content, such as the use of graphic organizers to support visual learners, and the use of learning tools and manipulatives for kinesthetic learners.

Also, I have found that student choice especially helps to avoid redundancy as well as boost their motivation and engagement in learning a new topic and allow them to perform within their own zone of proximal development. In teaching 4th-6th grade students in learning and memorizing root words and affixes, I allow students to choose their own expression of "wordplay" where they can either draw, act out, write a short poem, etc. in regards to an assigned root word to share with their peers. With this wordplay exercise, students can remember their root words and affixes more effectively when their interests and learning styles align.

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