When it comes to reading and writing, students bring a wide range of abilities to the classroom. We have to be intentional with our lessons and take inventory of our students’ interests. When a student walks in your classroom, they are a full of ideas, passions, and curiosities. It is our job to peel back the layers of shyness, sharp edges, walls, outspoken, loud, and enthusiastic personalities. That child walking into your classroom deserves the best and nothing less.
We will dive into what it can look like to provide the same lessons to a classroom, yet differentiate it so all students are able to get what they need and not feel embarrassed or called out for needing something different. It sounds like a daunting task to plan a lesson 4-5 different ways. Just like the previous post on math, take what you need the students to learn and understand and work backwards. I will work through a theme, could be called a unit, and plan a lesson with different levels of difficulty.
Theme/Unit Plants
Every grade level develops on the concept with more complexity. Take what you know from each grade level to help determine what came before or what will take place after. This also helps with providing challenges for your students and modifications when needed. You don’t have to know the ins and outs of every standard for every grade level, but have a working knowledge of how to keep with the grade level standard and work off the information developed from the previous grade. It helps when giving differentiation to work from previously taught concepts. I will work through a 2nd grade lesson since it’s in the middle of K-5.
In 2nd grade, readers can range from just learning common words to reading fluently. It’s this wide range that has many teachers questioning how to get everyone involved. Where I currently work, all the science and social sciences are integrated into literacy. We use cross-cutting concepts with the next generation science standards(NGSS).
The integrated curriculum brings reading and sciences together and can be very daunting at first to unpack all that goes into it. To truly plan out your 3 weeks of lessons, you need the end goal in mind. What do you want your students to learn? Really in any planning you should ask that question to make sure you are teaching all learners.
The orange section provides the core content, blue the experimentation for students, and the green helps us to see integration of reading, writing and thinking. This will set us up for hands-on experiments to bring out the natural curiosity of children. Even the most reluctant student will want to investigate plants if you turn it into an experiment. Children learn best through their hands.
Mentor Text and Active Learning
A mentor text can be read in 1 sitting to begin the theme/unit or chunked into sections to dive into deeper understanding of the content. This mentor text can extend into many grade levels. You can also find books to read throughout the theme/unit to develop fluency, expression, and a love for reading.
This title provides many extension opportunities for differentiation. Student might draw images to transfer knowledge to making a readers’ theater to act out the plant’s needs.
Now that we have a mentor text, let’s start the theme/unit. To begin give students an image and time for Give One, Get One, Move On. I’ll explain this strategy and give you a template to help students who need more support. Give One, Get One, Move On is a strategy that allows students to use their background knowledge, communication skills, and social skills to gain more information and ask questions. Students are given a topic to write down a few ideas or thoughts and then partner up to share a piece of information that the other may not have. If they share a common understanding they must work together to come up with a new thought. This is a great activity to do as a pretest and posttest to see how much learning took place and if there are still any misunderstandings.
Image from Pexels.com
If you have a student that needs support with this activity they could be paired with someone who can scribe or use highlighter to trace. All students can participate in the activity, but may need a level of support from peers or you to be included. You can also place this sheet on Seesaw so students can use the microphone to record or use the microphone for speech to text in text boxes as an accommodation, this is also built into a Chromebook.
Guided Reading and Centers
Extending your theme/unit into guided reading will allow your students to see content at a their reading level and can support the phonics that you are working on or reading skills (cause and effect, sequencing, etc). Use your curriculum to continue building on the standards for reading and writing. This leads us into center work. Take your theme/unit, phonics, and writing to create centers that reach your end goal. This is a perfect way to introduce choice boards.
Throughout your theme/unit you can add or change the needs of this choice board. Allow students to peer mentor others for a layer of support, use highlighters to scribe for a student or iPad/Chromebook to record, give students a high interest activity that allows them to showcase learning. There are many ways to allow students to apply their knowledge and yet you still get your end goal: “Do students understand the needs of plants and plant life?”.
The next questions would be:
- Do they need to complete all the choices?
- What if they want to do a different choice than what is listed?
- Can these be used for assessment?
My answer to that would be:
- Have they displayed understanding of the content?
- Do they need work on writing vs the content knowledge?
- Is their activity show going to support the end goal?
There are so many more themes/units that could follow this same way of thinking to integrate all areas and get kids actively engaged. When you look at your ELA block of time think of your end goal, ways to bring in reading-writing-phonics, and student voice. Your students are curious to learn about how things work and why they work. Allowing the students to voice how they want to learn or give ideas on ways to show what they have learned is the ultimate goal as educators. I am more than happy to dive deeper into this subject or support ways you want to lay out your themes. How can you use this planning in your next theme/unit? Reach out with ways you’re integrating your ELA block. I love hearing from you!
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