Teach Learn 413: Dr.

Salsbury

November 3, 2021

Annie Gbaford & Alec Savage

Rationale: Instructional strategies should support the social and academic language demands in a
lesson. In addition, instructional strategies should be differentiated for language and content
knowledge so that they are inclusive of all learners.

Objective: You will be able to illustrate how a lesson supports social and academic language
demands for all learners by using a summary table and by writing a narrative.

Procedure:

1. Identify one language function essential for your students to construct meaning from,
respond to, or interpret text. Consider a language objective format SWBAT…

The language function that is essential for my students to construct meaning, respond to,
or interpret text is speaking. In this lesson students will be expected to listen to the story
and analyze the images to make their predictions and discuss these predictions and
aspects of the story with peers using academic language. They need to have the academic
language capabilities to discuss with their students.

SWBAT thoroughly explains why their prediction was proven right or wrong.

2. Identify a key learning task from your plans that provide students with opportunities
to practice using the language function identified above.
● Students will have time to practice explaining and describing with a partner to tell
their predictions and explain to them why their predictions were correct or
incorrect.
● Students will brainstorm with their partner and share their predictions with the
class.

3. Given the language function and learning task identified above, describe the following
associated language demands (written or oral) students need to understand and/or use: (a)
vocabulary and (b) syntax and/or discourse.

For this lesson, students will need to know how to use the academic vocabulary in the
context of this lesson to show their ability to derive meaning and comprehension from the
text. Students need to understand academic vocabulary from the book that will be read to
them so they can have discussions with their peers. Students will use sentence starters
 like “I predict..”, “I think that this will happen because.”, or “my prediction was incorrect
because”. This will help the discourse between students flow better and create productive
educational discussions during this lesson.

4. Create a chart that includes the vocabulary, syntax and/or discourse language demands with
planned language supports for each language demand identified. Refer to the same resource page
for Elementary Literacy Download Elementary Literacy and Elementary Math Download
Elementary Math from the Identifying Language Demands Assignment. Scroll down to
“Example of Planned Language Supports.”

Language Functions Vocab Discourse Syntax

Demand

Example Compare two List of Students will tell Narrative story

characters in a vocabulary and create their timelines.
story. words own stories

Support Give students a Students will be In groups, Students will

comparison given a list of students will need to write a
table. They will vocabulary have a general sentence. About
need to tell you words. This will plot from the each aspect of a
which help them narrative story timeline
characteristic. determine timelines. They describing what
Matches which definitions when will then take is happening in
character in a reading a text. that plot. Then the story.
story. Speaking incorporate
instead of sentence stems
writing it down. and vocabulary.
To create a story
of their own.

5. Using your chart, write a narrative that identifies and describes the planned instructional
supports (during and/or prior to the learning task) to help students understand, develop, and use
the identified language demands (language function, vocabulary, discourse, or syntax). One to
two double-spaced pages is sufficient for your narrative.
 Functions: Students will be in a second-grade classroom. They will be doing a reading
lesson on Girl Wonder. In this book, there are many characters. Who each have very contrasting
characteristics? Keeping track of these items is crucial to the plot of the book. They will need to
identify characters emotions and motivations on an attribute chart. They will then have to put the
characteristics that match each character. They are two opposite people in the book. Which
makes this assignment easier for the student? They will not need to make predictions and have
descriptions straight from the book.

Vocab: students will be given a list 7 vocabulary words from the book. As a class we will do a
word web for each of these words. We will put the main word in the middle and Identify things
we know about this word or can help them describe it. The word web would consist of what
comes to mind when we hear this word other words with similar meaning. This will encourage
student to make personal connections to the word and really break the word down to understand
the word.

Syntax: Students will need to copy a paragraph from an example. They will be given sentences
with missing words. They will then need to input words into the sentence to make it make sense.
Once they have completed 4 sentences. They will then be asked to make the sentences into a
paragraph. Students may need to alter their sentences in the process.

Discourse: Students will create a story timeline. The beginning of the story needs to set up
characters, setting, and an issue. They will then need to move on to a climax of the story. This is
where the issue that the main character faces is at its highest. Finally, an ending for the story.
Resolutions are crucial to a good ending of a story. Students will be given a cheat sheet with this
information that they can use to identify the important details int there story to write on the
timeline and then draw picture that they feel represents a time in that story.

6. Highlight instructional strategies that differentiate instructional supports for students at

varying levels of English language proficiency. For the purposes of this assignment,
please identify at least three (3) hypothetical students who are English learners. You can
choose at which level of English language proficiency each student is currently placed.
At least one student will be at Level 1, Level 2 or Level 3. Achievement level descriptors
for English proficiency levels in reading, writing, listening and speaking can be found.

(The support listed for each student can be used for all of them to support their language
needs depending on which aspect they need to focus on for the subject.)

Julian level 1: To support Julian who is in the preproduction stage and has very limited
verbal English skills we would incorporate attribute charts within our lessons that he can
communicate his understanding of the story and lessen his load on trying to communicate
this to us verbally. The attribute chart will allow Julian to check off on things that he
cannot communicate verbally just yet. The attribute chart would allow for other students
to communicate with him because they can go over the charts together and simply
identify what their takeaways were and what they were able to identify the main points of
the story. Another thing that I would do to support Julian is scaffolding baseball
terminology. As a class we would create a word web, on the word web we would put
magic in the middle and as a class share what we know about baseball we would write
what we know about magic on the outer layers of the web and connect them to our main
words. Although Julian may not be able to communicate, he is capable of comprehending
and making connections and the word web would do just that for him.

Cindy Level 2: Cindy is in the early production stage producing sentences and incorrect
use of tense verbs. To support Cindy, we would incorporate many of the resources that
we use for Cassy and Julian, but we would also create a story timeline as a class. In the
story timeline we would line up the events of a story only focusing on the important
points/ main ideas and draw pictures to represent these scenes in our story. This is so we
can pull out just the information that Cindy needs to know and focus less on the language
in the story and focusing on comprehending the story and less on the language producing
aspect.

Cassy Level 3: Cassy is my student who is in the speech emergence stage. She has good
comprehension and can produce simple sentences. She struggles with grammar and
pronunciation. To support Cassy, we already have sentence starters in this lesson to help
Cassy convey her understanding of the book and use academic language properly.
Another support that we would put in place for Cassy is having the class do micros
election of our text. We would print out the text for the students and work as a class to
identify the main ideas and important points by highlighting and underlining important
information and connections.