KAITLIN BARNES
WEEKLY PLANNING
Because my school does not dictate the format in which I turn in my lesson plans, I have the freedom to create a weekly template that works for my planning needs. In both reading and social studies, my weekly plans include that week's vocabulary, skill/topic of focus, read aloud text(s), and opportunities for student practice. My weekly plans for both subjects are developed after consulting my long-term and unit plans.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Because I have 90-minute blocks for my reading classes, my weekly plans for reading are more detailed than my weekly plans for social studies. My typed weekly plans are where I think about and plan out my daily objectives, activities, and mini-lessons. These plans are developed in collaboration with my co-teacher. We review our long-term and unit plans and evaluate our weekly plans in relation to those. By reviewing the long-term and unit plans first, we are able to adjust our weekly plans to meet the learning needs of our students and design experiences that will enhance their learning.
My co-teacher and I use Google Drive to house our curriculum resources, such as exit tickets and interactive notebook inserts. I use my teacher planner to plan out what questions I will ask during read-aloud, and which students I will pull for reading conferences. It is not helpful for me to have that information housed in my weekly lesson plan, because this document stays in a folder outside of my door. Conference schedules and read-aloud questions are more useful in a format that is accessible throughout the day.
My weekly plans include information that is required by my school (accommodations, TEKS, assessment methods, etc.), and information that is useful for me when planning for the week (vocabulary words, student practice, mini-lesson, etc.). By using this template each week, I am sure that I don't leave out any necessary materials or lesson components.
I also leave room in my weekly plans to respond to student interests and current events. I want my students to see reading as being relevant to their lives, so I try to connect our learning to what they are seeing on the news or experiencing in their lives. Throughout our units, I design activities and pull in texts that help students bring their own opinions and experiences to our classroom. Keeping my weekly plans somewhat flexible allows me to understand the needs, strengths, and interests of my students, and plan instruction that responds accordingly. Flexible weekly planning also helps me adjust my instruction as needed when I see that assessment data suggests we spend more time on a particular skill, or when students are particularly interested in a topic.
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One way responded to student interest while reading Zane and the Hurricane was by giving students an opportunity to make a deep connection to a text of their choosing. Because we had just experienced Hurricane Harvey, many students chose to write about that and make connections between their experience and the experience of the book's protagonist. This activity was a way for my students to express their feelings about Hurricane Harvey in a way that was connected to our academic reading and writing.
This was a connection written by one of my students who is an English Language Learner. He struggled with syntax, but was able to make deeper connections between himself and the text by focusing on shared feelings and experiences.
This student, who is also an English Language Learner, was able to write in much more detail about her experience with Harvey and how it connected to our book.
Another way I help support my students' learning is by bringing in non-fiction articles that match our current class novel. I find that this helps prepare my students for our non-fiction units, and it makes the story more real for them. Towards the end of Zane and the Hurricane, the main characters are blocked from entering an unflooded parish because the police guarding the bridge wrongfully assume that they are looters. After reading this chapter, we read a non-fiction NPR interview that investigated real Katrina evacuees being blocked and shot at by police after the storm. Once we had read about and discussed the issue from both viewpoints, students wrote to the Gretna police chief and stated why they agreed or disagreed with his decision to close the bridge to pedestrians from New Orleans. Incorporating real-world examples of the events in our books deepens student comprehension of the texts and allows them to apply their knowledge in a cross-disciplinary way.
This student, a strong writer, demonstrates an intense emotional response to the police chief's decision and is able to articulately explain why she disagreed with his decision.
This student still receives ESL services and obviously struggles with spelling and syntax. However, she is still able to write at length to explain her decision, and she makes several connections to our novel as part of her argument.
I only have about 35 minutes daily for my social studies class, so when I am creating my weekly plans, I am sure to include readings and activities that will be informative and engaging for my students. My district provides a subscription to USA Studies Weekly, which is a series of newsletters that serve as a textbook for my students. I supplement our newsletters with activities and experiences that will get my students interested in social studies and help them practice the skills we focus on in reading class. I find that giving these students time to explore primary sources and experience the historical issues that we are reading about helps make the learning more concrete for them.
My weekly social studies lesson plans are a more condensed version of my reading plans but still include the TEKS, read-aloud, and activity for student practice.
Because of our time constraints, I try to design learning activities that can be completed in thirty minutes or less (the equivalent of two classes, once read-aloud time is removed). I often use choice menus to give students multiple ways to demonstrate their knowledge and understanding. For the pictures below, students were given the choice of either "fixing" the painting of the First Thanksgiving that we discussed as a class, or writing a letter from the perspective of a Pilgrim or Native American.
This student chose to write a letter and demonstrated an understanding that went beyond our discussion of the First Thanksgiving. He included a reference to our Pocahontas close read ("Winnie" is a lyric from the song), demonstrated knowledge of why the settlers came to America, and could articulate the challenges settlers faced.
These students struggled with spelling and syntax but could identify the areas of the painting that needed to be changed in order to make it more historically accurate. The painting that we viewed in class was painted more than 200 years after the First Thanksgiving and included racially charged depictions of Native Americans. These students fixed that by having all of the participants sit on the same surface and help each other.