Examples of Lessons Taught in Class
I believe in complete transparency in teaching, so I keep a camera in running in my room at all times that uploads daily footage to a secure site where I can download it within 10 days. This is a great tool for professional refinement. Below you will see some examples of me teaching lessons in my classroom, a whole-class ESL 4th grade room, alongside a synopsis of the lesson. All students in the videos had media release forms signed parents before any video taping took place. Still, the footage is kept at low quality to protect student privacy.
Compare and Contrasting Different Texts about the Same Topic
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This is a lesson where students learn how to compare and contrast two different texts that talk about the same topic. The lesson integrates content learning, culturally relevant topic and texts, and academic language instruction. It begins with the students doing an energizer to re-align their attention (seeing how quick they can stand up from sitting down with the teacher timing) - read the objectives - review prior learning and activate prior knowledge - the students are then taken through an academic speaking activity whereby language formulation, active listening, and content recollection all take place with the help of visual scaffolding. This activity is based on the work of building Academic Conversations by Jeff Zwiers.
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After a variety of modeling, guided practice, and whole-class independent practice of the academic conversation skills students use what they have learned to make the connection between academic speech and writing by writing what they have practiced saying in paragraph form.
This lesson was part of a larger unit of studying child immigration in Central America that focused on teaching the skills and language of recalling facts and details and comparing and contrasting treatment of a similar topic in different texts that I scaffolded by re-writing to meet different reading levels. Soon I will post the written student work from this lesson here also.
This lesson was part of a larger unit of studying child immigration in Central America that focused on teaching the skills and language of recalling facts and details and comparing and contrasting treatment of a similar topic in different texts that I scaffolded by re-writing to meet different reading levels. Soon I will post the written student work from this lesson here also.
Referential Pronouns
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Referential Pronouns - Small Group from Michael Abraham on Vimeo. |
This lesson was taught to a small group of ESL 4th graders who were also classified as Special Education. I filmed this on a day when their Special Education teacher was absent, so I filled in for the small group she normally takes. i show this video to demonstrate my abilities to teach an important academic skill that integrates content and language while having access to nothing more than a marker and white board. As this website attests to, I take preparation of instructional materials quite serious.
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However, we will still find ourselves in situations throughout the school year where we have to step in and teach effectively without as much preparation as we would have liked.
Identifying Character Traits
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This video shows a great example of team teaching and a fun part of lesson introducing students to the skill of identifying character traits and connecting it to textual evidence. In this video I, the ESL teacher, act in a skit with the general education teacher and exhibit well-animated character traits much to the amusement of the students who are on the edge of their seats watching their teachers act in front of them. After the skit the Special Education teacher leads the students through taking notes on the character traits and evidence on a graphic organizer.
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