School-Wide Literacy Lesson Plan

School-Wide Literacy Lesson Plan
Name
Institution
School-Wide Literacy Lesson Plan
Abstract
The paper examines the lesson plan for the school- wide literacy class. Planning for literacy class is important especially for students since reading and writing are the most fundamental skills in the life of a student from the time they start school. A student is deemed to have highly achieved in life when he or she learns how to read and write. By achieving the literacy development, a student’s performance across the other content area improves and makes learning part of him or her. To encourage and help students acquire these literacy skills, we need to engage them in the classroom discussion with all the literally- related materials involved. The appropriate text-based answers standards should be observed while in the classroom as teachers set realistic, clear and achievable objectives. The rights materials, resources, and technology involving two books, smart board, pencils, and computers should be used. Best grouping should be done based response intervention where the teacher identifies students’ capabilities and needs.
Keywords: literacy, literacy skills, development, technology, assessment, cooperative learning, intervention
Lesson Title
Text reading and comprehension- how you can best read a text, comprehend and answer questions
Overview
The specific information of the content knowledge and abilities of the students is acquired and retained through literacy-related skills such as writing, reading, speaking, presenting and viewing.

To encourage and help students acquire these literacy skills, we need to engage them in the classroom discussion with all the literally- related materials involved. The appropriate text-based answers standards should be observed while in the classroom as teachers set realistic, clear and achievable objectives. The rights materials, resources, and technology involving two books, smart board, pencils, and computers should be used. Best grouping should be done based response intervention where the teacher identifies students’ capabilities and needs. The case should be used in presentation and evaluation where the students’ contributions are regarded.
Standards
Number: ELD.K12.ELL.LA.1
English language learners communicate information, ideas and concepts necessary for academic success in the content area of Language Arts (CPALMS Standards).
Number: ELD.K12.ELL.MA.1
English language learners communicate information, ideas and concepts necessary for academic success in the content area of Mathematics.
Number: LAFS.K12.R.1.1
Read closely to determine what the text says explicitly and to make logical inferences from it; cite specific textual evidence when writing or speaking to support conclusions drawn from the text.
Number: LAFS.K12.R.1.2
Determine central ideas or themes of a text and analyze their development; summarize the key supporting details and ideas.
Number: LAFS.K12.R.1.3
Analyze how and why individuals, events, and ideas develop and interact over the course of a text.
Objectives/ Learning Outcomes
At the end of the lesson, students will:
1. Find the main idea in the page text and various details supporting the main idea
2. be able to learn that in every story, there is always the main idea and is often supported by various details.
Materials, Resources, and Technology
Throughout the lesson, the following materials, resources, and technology will be needed:
Two books for every student will be needed for this lesson. One will be for collection for the teacher to examine the work done while the other for the student to take home for parental examination.
The smart board and the pen to write the ideas students will be raised to help them brainstorm the story.
Pencils and erasers for the students to record down new ideas, questions, and answers and rub in case they make a mistake
Video on the reading strategies to give students more clues on smart reading.
The computer connected to the internet may be needed to search for new vocabularies.
Instructional Procedures
Learning students undergo many challenges associated with lack of requirements to facilitate their learning, especially specialized resources. Due to the cultural and background diversity among students, teachers should make use of the cooperative learning when in class to facilitate learning and the achievements of the students (Cooter & Cooter 2004). With the cooperative learning style of teaching, the teachers are only but the facilitators of the students as they are kept fully engaged by the cooperative learning teacher. For the efficiency and the effectiveness of the cooperative learning, the style should be grabbed, implemented and demonstrated during the first school days in all content areas and the management of the students’ behaviors.
The article by Newman, Staples, and Woodrow asserts that those families or communities whose members’ capital income is low equally know the importance of education at the early age (Zygouris-Coe 2007). In this regard, reading related strategies like CRISS can be effective especially in engaging the students (Kushman, Hanita, & Raphael 2011). For instance, using the KWL CRISS strategy, when reading the comprehension story and students are responding to the questions, the teacher asks the students to go back to the story and find the keywords relating to the answers and highlight the words (Santa, Havens, & Maycumber, 1996). By doing this, the students can understand the craft the author used and the organization when coming up with the story. However, the choice of any strategy by the teacher depends explicitly on the personal reason of the teacher to apply the particular CRISS strategy.
Studies have found some students having the persistence difficulties in the reading. Teachers handling such students in the classroom should use the explicit teaching where they make the instructions in the reading explicit for these kinds of students (Harris, & Butaud, 2016). Douglas Fisher, Nancy Frey and John Hattie present various reasons behind the falling behind of the struggling readers which include poor strategies by the teachers, the teaching style, and the materials used in reading (Fisher, Frey, & Williams, 2002).The steps in explicit instruction involve learning outcomes, educational activities, required materials, the time required and the evaluation. At the actual implementation of the explicit instruction, teachers demonstrate to the students what is required of them to do and guide them through group activities to gain skills and apply the skills in learning for their own.
Students from low economic status do not receive full support due to poverty, so they lack any prior knowledge of writing skills (Reeves, 2003). It is therefore for the teachers in the lower elementary grades to teach students how to develop thoughts and put them together so that they do not have difficulties when they get to fourth grade. For instance, students should be provided with journals in writing and math for doing self- reflection. Students in lower grades can draw pictures and describe them in sentences while in upper grades can come up with thoughts and write in sentences. This will make FL writes at the fourth grade simpler, especially for ESE students.
Response intervention is an instructional strategy that can be used in school where students are placed in specific groupings for teachers to address the individual needs (Fisher & Adler 1999). The teacher can use the diagnosed tools of the countywide to assist the literacy development of the students. The research has found the strategy to be efficient especially in cases where the student can neither read nor write which then means that the student has a problem across all the content area (Tableman, 2004). This will call for the collaboration of the teacher with the other teachers of the student. To the end, the parent can be involved just to help the teacher identify the needs the student has. The involvement of the parents becomes essential when the parent feels the student is playing with the teacher. Response intervention helps to offer various solutions to the students and the parents or even other teachers on the need of the student.
Research has linked reading to the thinking activity where teachers can use the Directed reading – thinking activity as an instructional strategy. The students are required to use the background knowledge they have about reading to connect, predict and set a certain purpose in their reading (Roberts, & Leko, 2013). The strategy also gives the opportunity to the students to use the information provided for in the text to make a judgment based on the evaluation. It is the teacher who divides the reading text into various segments that are meaningful before leading the students to say what they know about the text in conjunction with the reading segment.
Question- answer relationship is a strategy that has been scientifically proved to work in the classroom settings for literacy. Using the instructional procedure of question and answer, the teacher allows a free discussion where both the teacher and the students ask create questions and seek the answers based on the text (Whitney 2004). The strategy is quite important for the comprehension that is a component in the literacy since it involves getting answers directly from the text, and then through thinking and searching, objectively, the strategy helps students become proficient in asking questions and getting the answers for the questions before comprehending the text.
According to the American Medical Association, exposing students to the media messages allows them to see and make an interpretation of these messages. Students once they see, read, or even hear any message from any sources, it leaves the message of “walk this way- talk this way- look this way.” Then they will come up with their own media message to promote health behaviors before making clear statements to persuade others of making health decisions (Irvin, Meltzer, & Dukes, 2007). The strategy is important in teaching and reinforcing literacy skills while applying health concepts.
Student Groupings
At the beginning of the lesson, the student grouping will be based on the whole class group. After that, they will have a one on one talking or conversation in small groups before expanding their groups of 6 students each. Towards the end of the lesson, the students will converge again for a whole group setting. For the student groups, I recommend that each student contribute an evidentiary point based on the text and they should note down each.
Presentation
Students should be able to share the answers they have to the question in the small grouping they have first. After that, they should converge for the whole class group where every group will present their answers before the rest of the groups.
Assessment/Evaluation
At the end of the lesson, the assessment method will base on the question- answers. The teacher will give each student questions based on the texts to measure their success. A student will only score a mark for the correctly given answers and the explanation for the answers given. Any students who do this will earn the higher grade than those who do not follow all the instructions. The results of their evaluation will be posted on the student portal account for each student.
Closure/Teacher Reflection
When we started the lesson, no one knew what the text was all about, and no one could tell the characters in the text. All the students gave though close but wrong predictions for the story as no one had the idea. Now, am happy that we come to the closure when we all can recall everything and tell the main ideas in the text and support them fully. At least a good number of students know how to extract correct answers from the whole text. I can give a positive reflection to the lesson that it was successful as the students’ participation was encouraging. I wish all future lessons look like this one.
References
CPALMS: Standards. Educators toolkits. Retrieved from: http://www.cpalms.org/Public/
Cooter, K. S., & Cooter Jr, R. B. (2004). Challenges to Change: Implementing Research-Based Reading Instruction in Urban Schools. Perspectives on rescuing urban literacy education: Spies, saboteurs, and saints, 41.
Fisher, C., & Adler, M. A. (1999). Early Reading Programs in High-Poverty Schools: Emerald Elementary Beats the Odds.
Fisher, D., Frey, N., & Williams, D. (2002). Seven literacy strategies that work. Reading and Writing, 60(3).Harris, S., & Butaud, G. L. (2016). Strategies for supporting elementary students of poverty in reading. In Social justice instruction (pp. 171-183). Springer, Cham.Irvin, J. L., Meltzer, J., & Dukes, M. (2007). Taking action on adolescent literacy: An implementation guide for school leaders. Ascd.Kushman, J., Hanita, M., & Raphael, J. (2011). An Experimental Study of the Project CRISS Reading Program on Grade 9 Reading Achievement in Rural High Schools. Final Report NCEE 2011-4007. National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance.Reeves, D. B. (2003). High performance in high poverty schools: 90/90/90 and beyond.
Roberts, C. A., & Leko, M. M. (2013). Integrating Functional and Academic Goals into Literacy Instruction for Adolescents with Significant Cognitive Disabilities through Shared Story Reading. Research & Practice For Persons With Severe Disabilities, 38(3), 157-172. doi:10.1177/154079691303800303
Santa, C. M., Havens, L. T., & Maycumber, E. M. (1996). Project CRISS: Creating independence through student-owned strategies. Kendall/Hunt.Tableman, B. (2004). Characteristics of effective elementary schools in poverty areas. Best Practice Brief, 29, 1-4.
Whitney, P. (2004). School-Wide Literacy Workshops. Reading Psychology, 25(1), 61-65.Zygouris-Coe, V. (2007). Family literacy: The missing link to school-wide literacy efforts. Reading Horizons, 48(1), 6.