LESSON TITLE: ___ TEACHER NAME: Preparation/Planning ESL Course: Academic Writing Topic/Theme: Exploring Different Cultures Listening

Objectives Speaking Reading Writing Bridging What background knowledge do the students already have? Yicun Liang

Facts and Opinions DATE:

Lesson #: __2__ Mar. 5, 2014____

Level

Beginning

Intermediate

Advanced

Multilevel

N/A N/A N/A Students will develop skills that enable them to write their claims with strong evidences as a support. They have learned paragraph structure, unity and coherence, supporting details for paragraph writing, five-paragraph essay structure, thesis statement and logical division of subtopics. I will use the graphic organizer, leading the students to brainstorm some subtopics toward our writing topic - my favorite travel experience. I will collect and write down their ideas on the whiteboard. I will review the paragraph structure with the students before asking them to write the paragraph, in which they have to combine facts and opinions. I will randomly pick two students to write the paragraph structure on the whiteboard. Then I will discuss with the whole class to see if the two students provide the correct paragraph structure. I will review the use of supporting details for paragraph writing with them before teaching them how to choose facts to support their opinions. I will ask them what a supporting detail is as well as ask them to give me some examples to show their understanding of supporting details. Then I will show them my paragraph sample, and explain to them how I use facts to support my opinions.

What will you do to activate or link students prior knowledge or experience to upcoming content?

Engagement with New Material What will you do to engage students in the active learning of the new material?

At the very beginning of the class, I will ask the students about their plans for spring break in order to engage them to the writing topic - travel. I will randomly choose three to five students to share their plans for spring break. I will use the web-based technology tool - Popplet to engage them to participate in brainstorming the topic-related vocabulary. Popplet is a useful engaging web tool and iPad app that provides students a platform to experience the collaborative mind-mapping activity. I will sign up each student an account

and invite them to my popplet as collaborators. When the students successfully log in and add their comments on my popplet, their names and responses will be showed on the popplet instantly. Therefore, the students are able to see each other's response. Moreover, this web tool provides each student an equal opportunity to participate in the brainstorming, and also gives the shy students a chance to "speak" out their ideas. I will use the web-based technology tool - Weebly to engage them to write facts and opinions for their three sub-topics on their own website. Weebly is a web tool that enables the students to create their own website. Therefore, it provides them a non-threatening environment to write. Moreover, the students can drag topic-related pictures beside their writing, which makes writing fun comparing with the boring traditional paper-and-pen writing. As I mentioned above, Popplet is an useful web-based technology tool to engage students to brainstorm as students can see each other's responses instantly no matter on their own device or on the projector, and everyone has an equal opportunity to share his/her ideas. Thus, I am able to see on the projector who does response and who does not response. Once I see someone is missing, I will walk down to him/her to make sure he/she is engaged and making his/her response as well as to see if he/she encounters technology problems. As I mentioned above, Weebly provides students a nonthreatening environment to write as each student has his/her own website on Weebly, in which they are able to drag pictures and write their facts and opinions. I will walk down to each student during the writing activity with the use of Weebly, to make sure he/she is engaged and help him/her with his/her writing and technology problems.

What will you do to ensure that all students are engaged?

Application What opportunities will you provide students to practice and apply their knowledge/skill to meet the objectives for this lesson? To apply to other contexts?

I will ask the students to free-write at least three facts and three opinions on their website after I briefly explain to them the definition of fact and opinion. I will show the students my sample facts, opinions and paragraph on my website, and asked them sentence by sentence to define whether the sentence is a fact or an opinion or none of them. Moreover, I will also ask them to find out which facts and opinions I used to combine my paragraph, referring to the facts and opinions I list above the paragraph. I will ask the students to combine their facts with opinions they write in class about transportation to construct a paragraph on their website as their assignment.

Assessment How will you assess their

I will assign the assignment, which requires them to write a paragraph

learning of the objectives?

about transportation in their favorite place based on the facts and opinions they wrote in class. I will check their paragraph writing through visiting their websites.

Closing How will you help students I will explain their homework - writing a paragraph. recap the learning and link it Based on the facts and opinions you wrote in class about the back to the original purpose of transportation in your favorite place, write a paragraph to the lesson? combine your facts and opinions. (Try to use facts to support your opinions.) I will quick review the definition of fact and opinion and ask them to mark down my website link, in which they are able to see my writing sample. I will also remind them to try using facts to support their opinions in the paragraph. Technology If applicable for your context and your lesson, how will you meaningfully integrate technology into your lesson?

I will use Popplet for brainstorming the topic-related vocabulary with the whole class, which aims at encouraging each student to participate in the brainstorm activity. Since Popplet is a web-based platform, the students can see each other's response instantly, and the teacher can see who does give a response as well as who does not. I will use Weebly to engage the students to practice writing facts, opinions and a paragraph combing facts with opinions. I preferred creating the worksheet on each student's website rather than handing out the paper worksheet, because I want to transform the traditional paper-and-pen writing style in order to provide a non-threatening writing environment to the students.

Reflection What went well? How do you know?

The students were very engaged in both the whole-class brainstorm activity and the facts and opinions writing activity, in which they used web tools to participate. I noticed their increased engagement as I walked down to the students during both two activities, realizing that the students actively asked me questions and no student used their cellphone to do irrelevant things. Before I made my final decision to integrate technology in the lesson, I asked the students if they were able to bring their laptop or tablet to class. Since they all raised their hands to show me they can do it, I began to work on choosing the appropriate web tools for my lesson. However, on the day of giving them this lesson, only five out of 15 students brought their laptop or tablet, which made my lesson challenged. Because only five students brought their laptop or tablet to class, I encouraged the students who have a laptop or tablet to share their devices with the ones who did not bring their laptop or tablet.

What didnt go as planned?

What contingency plan did you employ?

Therefore, in the two activities I planned with the use of web tools, they worked in groups rather than did it individually. What would you do differently next time? I will scaffold the students more to learn the two new concepts - fact and opinion before asking them to write their facts and opinions. I will use some pictures and example sentences to deepen their understandings toward these two concepts after I explain the characteristics of both concepts to them. Then I will ask them to read an article and figure out the author's opinion and find out the facts, which are used to support the author's opinion. Next step will be teaching them how the facts are used to support the opinion in this article. Then I will ask them to read a short paragraph, which only has opinions, and they will need to add some facts to this paragraph in order to support the opinions in it. The last step is to give them a writing topic to write in order to check if they successfully use strong evidences to support their claims.

Did your students meet the No, they did not. purpose and objectives for this The objectives were assessed by reviewing the students' assignment. lesson? How do you know? However, the students' assignments reflected they do not have a clear distinction between facts and opinions, which hindered them to combine facts and opinions in their writing as well as use facts to support their opinions. What do your students need next? How do you know? The students need more time and practices to work on facts and opinions. After I have reviewed their facts, opinions and paragraph on their websites, I found that the facts most students provided were more like opinions than facts. Therefore, I realized that the students failed to distinguish a fact and an opinion clearly. In addition, the paragraph they wrote failed to use facts to support opinions. I think one of my strength is that I am very patient to my students. I make efforts to help my students to solve their problems and care for each student. I am more comfortable and confident to speak like a teacher now. However, my needing-growth-area is class management. I think one way I can work on this area is to build up my authority as a teacher. However, meeting the experienced teachers to learn some tips about class management from them is another way to work on my needing-growth-area.

What did you learn about your glows and grows as a teacher? What can you do to work on your areas needing growth?

Student Work Sample I (Weebly)

Student Work Sample II (Popplet)