Mrs. Adams has a lively group of second graders who are excited and eager to learn.

Most of
them live within walking distance of the south Philadelphia school they attend and are therefore integrated
in to the diverse and multi-cultural neighborhood. The classroom reflects this community with students
from various cultural backgrounds, most of them in families of low socio-economic status. I came to this
classroom as a pre-student teacher in early October and increased my presence as a student teacher in
January. Considering I have been a figure in the classroom since October, I have come to know the
students well and am familiar with their personalities, attitudes, home lives and, of course, their
performance in the classroom.
Having been able to spend this much time with one group of students has been a tremendous help
when it comes to Domain 1 of the Danielson Framework for teaching, and especially in component 1b
demonstrating knowledge of students. I have had countless conversations with Mrs. Adams about each
students in class performance and attitude and have taken the opportunity to get to know the students as
people as well. This knowledge has armed me with the knowledge I need to create successful lesson
plans.
Although there are many things consider within each component of Domain 1, I will boil down my
thoughts to the things I find most necessary within each component. When I began to write my lesson
plan about adjectives, there are two major considerations that relate to component 1b. The first is the
ESL population in my classroom. About half of my students are not native English speakers and
especially since this is a whole class lesson plan, I try to use ideas of universal design to make the
objectives accessible for all my students. For this plan, I placed a heavy emphasis on visuals that were
recognizable and familiar to all students, regardless of language or culture. The first part of my plan
centered around three pictures: an apple, a rock and the sun. These are all items that the majority of
children have had some experience with and should be easily recognizable. Having visuals right in front

of them instead of just talking about the items was a great way to help both my ESL students and the rest
of the class describe the items. In future, Ive thought about using actual, concrete items for this activity.
These ideas also speak to the second major consideration I make which is the developmental and
academic level of the students. All of the students in the classroom read below the 2 nd grade benchmark
reading level, some of whom are well below and some whom are just beginning to reach benchmark.
Having said that, I still challenge my students and help them reach beyond their current levels and move
forward. This is always a major consideration when crafting plans and with my students, the most
effective way to help them is through modeling. For that reason, my plan is filled with modeling from
beginning to end.
The opening activity, which is ultimately a whole group modeling of their summative assessment,
serves as an attention grabber as well as an activation and assessment of prior knowledge. This activity
comes right on the heels of a unit that focused on nouns. I demonstrate my knowledge and content and
pedagogy, component 1a, through this progression and by tying these two topics together. I understand
the prerequisite relationship between parts of speech like noun and adjective and therefore position my
lesson on adjectives right after a unit on nouns has finished. I also tie in the term noun and what it means
throughout my lesson plan which helps to understand the new concept of adjectives while also cementing
and expanding on the students knowledge of nouns.
This progression from one unit to the next and throughout the lesson plan creates a coherent
instructional plan that is easy to follow. This speaks to component 1e, designing coherent instruction.
Going from nouns to adjectives seems like a natural progression and my lesson plan mirrors this
progression by including activities that have aligned educational outcomes and which flower from whole
group, to teams, to individual work. This lesson plan slowly steps down the level of scaffolding until
students can work on their own on a summative assessment that is directly derived from the class
activities.

This summative assessment is created using backward design to ensure that it is aligned with the
standards and objectives and to ensure that instruction is directly related to what the students are
expected to learn. The standards of component 1f, designing student assessment, and 1c, setting
instructional outcomes, are met using backward design to create assessment, instruction and outcomes
that are all derived from the standard that the plan is based on. I put these two components together
because I find that in writing a plan, these two happen side by side and simultaneously. As I write my
outcomes, I am continuously thinking of ways students can show their learning through assessment. By
also communicating what the expectations are for the assessment to students clearly and concretely, it is
assured that assessment is valid. To meet this criteria, I explained the requirements, wrote them on the
board and even had students repeat them back to me to ensure understanding. Another huge part of
designing student assessment is the use of formative assessment. This occurred the most during the
warm up activity. The result of this formative assessment was that I found students were grasping the
concept quickly and there was no need to do the extra examples that I had prepared. Rather, we moved
on to the final activity and were, as a result, given more time to complete.
There werent a plethora of resources required for this plan but in designing both the lesson and
the assessment, I kept my resources in mind. This lesson plan demonstrates my knowledge of
resources, component 1d, because I used various sources to my advantage. First, when designing the
plan, I surveyed other teachers ideas online using sites like Pinterest and Teachers Pay Teachers. When
I came up with my own idea, which turned out to be a mixture of a few things I saw adapted to my
classroom, I used materials provided by both the school and by community programs like Donors Choose.
The white paper was provided by the school, while supplies like markers, construction paper, and scissors
were acquired through Donors Choose earlier in the year. Although this particular lesson plan didnt
require additional funding, it was made possible through the use of various, pre-acquired resources.
Ultimately I found this lesson to be a great success. The students moved through the plan with
enough difficulty to be challenging, but not so much that it was beyond their comprehension. Topics like

parts of speech can be challenging and I know the students will need many follow-up activities to cement
their learning, but this was a fantastic start for them. When teaching a more advanced plan on adjectives,
I will be able to refer back to the performances here as a guide for where to start and where to end.