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ELEMENTARY UNIT/ LESSON PLANNING COMMENTARY

Your Name: Sarah Patterson
Date: 5/19/14
Unit/Lesson Title: Birds & Habitats
Grade Level and Content Area: Kindergarten, Science
Number of Students: 22
Total Amount of Time: 30 minutes
1. Learning Goals/Standards: What concepts, essential questions or key skills will be your focus? What
do you want your students to know at the end of this unit/lesson?
The key skills students will use in this lesson are discussion, careful listening, and auditory/visual
comprehension. By the end of this lesson, I want my students to understand that birds have similar body parts
to humans, but that some of these body parts help them fly. I want students to identify some of the habitats that
different types of birds live in, and relate this to our general understanding of animal habitats that we have
been discussing in class. I also want students to understand some of the basic reasons that birds can fly. Lastly,
I want students to compare how birds and humans are alike, and to some degree, how birds and dinosaurs are
alike.
2. Rationale: Why is this content important for your students to learn and how does it promote social
justice?
The content of this lesson itself may not promote social justice, but I am devoting this lessons to my students
interests and what they have told me they want to learn about birds. I do so because I want students to be
engaged in their learning, to feel they make choices in their learning, and to understand that we are all learners
in this classroom community, including myself. I have told my students that for this lesson, I had to do research,
and that they have taught me. I think this is an essential part of social justice, as it keeps education in the hands
of our students, even the littlest ones.
3. Identifying and supporting language needs: What are the language demands of the unit/lesson? How
do you plan to support students in meeting their English language development needs including
academic language!?
This may be a very language!demanding lesson. I am aware of this, and will take time to e"plain the words we
cover, especially the body parts of birds. I will also try to break down comple" vocabulary and the fast!paced
discussion of how birds fly in the video. I will also give students an opportunity to practice using this language
when they discuss in whole!group and pair!share discussions. I will provide oral sentence!starters for pair!
share conversations.
4. Accessing prior knowledge and building upon students backgrounds, interests and needs: How
do your choices of instructional strategies, materials and sequence of learning tasks connect with your
students" backgrounds, interests, and needs?
This lesson revolves completely around my students interests. Last week, we made a #$L chart, and many of
the %uestions my students had were very obscure and were not answered by my lesson or the learning video I
showed them. To make up for this, I am devoting today to answering my students %uestions. I will relate this to
our current lessons about animal habitats and the animals that birds may cohabitate with, like the amphibians,
reptiles, and mammals we have been learning about. &ince this lesson is so language!heavy, I am providing
ample opportunities for my students to speak and practice the language, a skill many of my 'nglish language
learners need.
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#$ Accommodations: What accommodations or support will you use for all students including English
%anguage %earners and students with special educational needs, i$e$ &'(E students and students with
)E*"s!? E+plain how these features of your learning and assessment tasks will provide all students
access to the curriculum and allow them to demonstrate their learning$
To accommodate this language!heavy lesson for my students who are learning 'nglish, I am going to provide
many visuals in my presentation and in the video. I will provide an array of different formats for my students to
learn from, from the presentation, to a video, to a picture story. (y assessment will be informal, as I will assess
student reading by listening to them as they read independently, and their comprehension through our informal
discussion. &tudents will be given additional assistance to elaborate their ideas if needed. (y student with an
I') will be given additional assistance during both by his one!on!one educational aide and myself to elaborate
his understanding in discussion and with his think!pair!share partner.
. !"eor#: Which theories support your unit/lesson plan? e+plain the connections!
This lesson stems from Laves theory of a community of learners. &tudents have created the curriculum for this
lesson, and have been told that like me, they are both e"perts and learners. *uring this lesson, we will have to
collaborate together to understand and make sense of what we are learning. This lesson is also supported by
sociocultural learning theory, and gives students the opportunity to engage and collaborate with their peers. By
asking students to share their partners favorite scenes rather than their own, they will need to practice the
listening skills so key sociocultural learning.
7. Reflection: (answer the following questions after the teaching of this unit/lesson) What do you feel was
successful in your lesson and why? If you could go back and teach this learning segment again to the same
group of students, what would you do differently in relation to planning, instruction, and assessment? How
could the changes improve the learning of students with different needs and characteristics?
It is still hard to tell how this lesson went. My students were so engaged throughout the lesson, and had many
questions and comments to add, so many that we barely made it through the slideshow I had put together for
this class. There was a lot of information for them, and the video I chose was very difficult, but I think by
pausing and breaking down what the video said, students actually came away with a lot of understanding.
While I am glad I did the lesson and honored all of my students interests and inquiries, this is not something I
could do in this way every time. Andre suggested that next time I have the class vote for which topic of their
interest we will cover. I like this idea, and might add that I could help students look up the answers to their
other inquiries during free choice after the lessons sometimes. This way, all students questions can be
honored.
Edit (6/8/14): The day after this lesson, several of my students brought bird books in and one student brought in
a booklet he made with his mom and aunt about birds at home that night. Their interest and excitement led us to
an extended bird unit, and students left kindergarten recalling how much they learned and loved about birds,
their brains, livers, wings, and everything in between. While I owe some of this to their natural enthusiasm, I do
not think they would have been nearly as excited about birds if we had not spent this quality time going over
their interests in bird brains and flight. While we cannot do these miscellaneous interest lessons all the time,
this lesson showed just how important and uplifting these lessons are for our students, even the youngest ones.
**COMMENTARY IS REQUIRED FOR ALL UCLA ELEMENTARY FORMAL OBSERVATIONS **
2013-2014