ELL Lesson Reflection

Sarah Mueller
1. What was your objective(s) for the lesson? Do you feel like you achieved
your objective(s)? How do you know?

Our Language Objective was: Students will be able to define segregation, racism, race/ethnicity,
and ethics in a graphic organizer through a jigsaw activity. Our Content Objective was:
Students will be able to demonstrate their understanding of the culture of the American South
and racism. We achieved our objectives, in that Taralyn completed her definition, drawings of
each word, and sentence regarding what segregation is. She then gained the definitions for the
other vocabulary words through the jigsaw activity. She also understood the Content Objective in
that she participated in our class discussion about Racism and Ethics as they pertain to Plessy v.
Ferguson. Moreover, her exit ticket demonstrated her knowledge of these terms as she applied
the ethics seen in the Plessy v. Ferguson case, as well as Atticus Finchs ethics, to her own life.
2. The goal here was to challenge the students' vocabulary/language
development. Do you feel that you challenged them in this regard? How do
you know?

I do feel that Taralyn was challenged in this regard. Although she had some preconceived ideas
about what race, racism, and segregation are, she had not yet applied them to ethics. By pulling
at her preconceived ideas and applying them to a new and foreign topic, we challenged her
schemas and helped develop new ideas. As we went through our lesson, Taralyn asked questions
when she did not understand and was challenged. By the end of the lesson, she was employing
the vocabulary we taught her in our classroom conversation and in her exit ticket, demonstrating
that she learned and applied the challenging vocabulary and ideas.
3. Was there a part of the lesson that you realized was too difficult and/or
too easy? Was there a part of the lesson that you felt didn't work the way
you meant it too? What adjustments could you make if you were to do this
lesson again?

Taralyn found drawing an example of segregation as part of her definition packet to be difficult.
However, after we helped her conceptualize examples of where she has seen segregation in
history, she was able to draw an example separate by equal water fountains. Although we
modeled drawing an example of the vocabulary word with racism as a class, we could have
modeled the thought process better. For instance, we should have gone through:
Step 1: Recall the definition of the word
Step 2: Where have you seen this word in action in your life? In a book? In history?
Step 3: Think of the scene where you have seen this word in action. What is happening?

Step 4: Draw the scene to help you remember the word

Had we broken it up like this, Taralyn might have had an easier time applying the vocabulary
word in a visual representation.
4. I realize that communication was not an issue since they are both
English speakers. If you were to repeat this lesson with an ELL student of
the same age (student has a basic understanding of the English language
and lacks foundation of content knowledge) what changes would you have
to make?

Should this lesson involve actual ELL students, we would have had to provide a lot more
background knowledge about racism and how it has been a theme in the United States South in
our nations history. Additionally, we would have had to provide more information about slavery,
the abolitionist movement, the civil rights movement, etc. Building this background knowledge
is key, as the ELL students would not have grown up learning the fundamentals of American
History.