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RDG 323 Portfolio Reflection #2


How can I plan and design instruction so students will actively engage in literacy and discipline
specific activities?

When my niece first began driving, she said that every time she drove in a new area it was like

filling in a section of the map in her mind. She could hop from one section of the map to the next

because she knew how they were connected. This is how teachers can think about planning

lessons. They need to be organized and meaningful in their plans and offer the students

something relevant and connected. It is essential to help them connect to prior knowledge as well

as future action.

Surface learning is where teachers start with an idea or skill, but “Deeper learning activities

require learners to draw information from knowledge they have acquired and then do something

meaningful with it”[ CITATION Dee13 \l 1033 ] in order to drive that learning deeper teachers have

to connect it to both prior knowledge and actions. These connections, once made, also drive

engagement. Lessons are rarely engaging because they are fun, but when students can take an

active part in the learning, with group work and self-expression during well-connected lessons

the students are engaged and motivated. This is a chance to connect the students life experiences,

music, jokes, pop culture and social concerns they are surrounded by and show them how the

things they are fans of have come and show them how they are progressing forward.
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When planning for instruction it is important to plan for assessment and understanding. This is

easily built in during planning by including content and language objectives and by modeling the

objectives during explicit instruction such as I do, we do, you do structures. This helps formulate

how the students will engage in the content for the lesson. These structured lesson frames

promote the use of structures and frames for breaking down or building more complex texts for

the students. Charts, graphic organizers, an explicit instruction on annotations will help students

gain access to the disciplinary literacy of the content. These practices keep students from feeling

overwhelmed and lost in the flood of information. It models how the students can organize and

sort information going forward. When organizing information in these ways it can also make

concepts more easily understood.

With clear content and language objectives it becomes clear how to make formative assessments

during the lesson. Formative assessment are especially crucial in informing instruction because

“assessment data should be analyzed to gauge what has been fully learned, what is only partially

understood, and where errors and misconceptions stubbornly remain” [ CITATION Fis14 \l 1033 ].

Formative assessments can often be the fun part of a lesson and be helpful in motivating students

to become and remain engaged.

One thing to be aware of when planning is the social aspect of the lesson and the environment it

creates in the classroom. Teachers need to keep in mind the differences between in-person and

online environments and “As teachers move online, a critical first step is to create a safe virtual

space that will help students develop their social presence”[ CITATION Tuc20 \l 1033 ]. Group work
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is one of the key elements of creating deeper knowledge and group work can be easier to

facilitate in the classroom but must be done with the objectives in mind. Doing group work in an

online environment might be challenging and require entirely different tactics to get students to

participate fully.

Finally, teachers need to take time to “to study their own teaching and the teaching of others”

[ CITATION MOJ15 \l 1033 ] to stay flexible, but also continue to learn from one another about how

teaching looks from the students perspective. When teachers observe other teachers, they can be

inspired or see teaching from a new perspective, which keeps lesson planning fresh and dynamic

promising to be more engaging and effective for the students.

References
Deeper Learning Defined. (2013, April). Retrieved Oct. 9, 2020, from William and Flora Hewlett
Foundation: https://hewlett.org/library/deeper-learning-defined/

Fisher, D., & Frey, N. (2014). Assessments That Highlight Strengths and Challenges. International
Reading Association, 1-11. doi: DOI:10.1598/e-ssentials.8052

MOJE, E. B. (2015, Summer). Doing and Teaching Disciplinary Literacy with Adolescent Learners: A Social
and Cultural Enterprise. Harvard Educational Review, 85(2), 254-278.

Tucker, C. R. (2020). Successfully Taking Offline Classes Online. An Educational Leadership Special
Report, 77, 10-14. Retrieved September 18, 2020, from
http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-
leadership/summer20/vol77/num10/Successfully-Taking-Offline-Classes-Online.aspx

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