1A.4: Well-Structured Lessons
Evidence #1: “This lesson was suitably complex, with a modest variety of activities that lent itself to a well-paced class. Students read aloud as a large group, then engaged in table-talk, and then participated in a large group discussion” (P. Weyler). Focus Area for Of Mice and Men lesson on 12/14/2015, A Key Reversal. (See LAP Overview Here)
Evidence #2: “Over his first few months, Mr. Porcella has experimented with a wide variety of activities and has developed the ability to plan lessons and units with great variety. In his unit on Of Mice and Men, along with traditional activities such as reading aloud and large group discussion, Nick has employed station activities, small group discussions, a Socratic seminar, improvisational activities, and annotation. His writing assignments have included open-ended responses that call for evidence, personal responses that call for making connections, and creative writing that requires empathetic reading and imagination. Mr. Porcella employs two or three of these structures in every lesson, using concrete products or exit tickets to assess student understanding” (P. Weyler).
Evidence #3: “Mr. Porcella designed and submitted a lesson with measurable outcomes and challenging tasks that would prepare students for their upcoming SAT exam and challenge their thinking and ideas regarding an upcoming text. He utilized appropriate pacing, transitioning, and engagement strategies. Students wrote for 25 minutes silently and then transitioned to discussing a short story, and then preparation for the upcoming play for homework” (D. Carlson).
Evidence #4: “Throughout the year, this has been a consistent strength of Mr. Porcella’s. Since our formative assessment meeting, he has developed and taught strong units on David Klass’s You Don’t Know Me, a mini-unit on technology issues focused on non-fiction articles, and Romeo and Juliet for his 9th graders, and on The Kite Runner, selected short stories, and A Streetcar Named Desire for his 11th graders. In each case, he has had strong and clear essential questions that he has presented to students in a way that emphasizes how each work connects to their own lives and concerns (questions about the nature of friendship, personal identity, love, loyalty and betrayal, and the uses and abuses of technology in modern life). He always has measurable objectives for each lesson, and has improved in his understanding of how best to scaffold particular readings and assignments for the full range of students in his class. Mr. Porcella’s pacing is generally excellent; he pays close attention to how much time is left in the class, and is one of the few first year teachers I have worked with who frequently manages to give students a strong sense of closure at the end of each lesson (either through exit slips, closing commentary on an activity or discussion, or an explanation of what students will be doing next and how it connects to what they have just finished). He is very strategic about student groupings, placing students at tables with those with whom they can best work effectively, and has all aspects of each day’s activities planned out thoroughly. As noted in my comments on his formative assessment, he also draws on a wide range of materials to provide engaging philosophical, psychological and cultural/historical contexts for each of the texts he teaches, and he uses technology (primarily an Elmo projector) on a daily basis to project starter prompts and overviews of activity instructions. One aspect of his planning in which he has grown significantly is in his flexibility, as I will discuss further in the ‘Adjustment to Practice’ section” (H. Roberts).
Explanation: I think of myself as a highly organized person, and this has transferred to my teaching this year. I always have LAPs ready at least a week ahead of time (while I readily make adjustments even the morning of the plans as necessary) and I have CUPs that help me use backward design to see my end goals. I work to keep my plans as organized and structured as possible, which I find beneficial to students as well as to me. Examples of well-structured lessons can be found in the Portraits sections, including for Of Mice and Men, You Don’t Know Me, and A Streetcar Named Desire.
1B.2: Adjustment to Practice
Evidence #1: “Mr. Porcella adjusted several early lessons to clarify his objectives and expectations. After the first few weeks, he began utilizing more activities that allowed students to get out of their seats and become more physically active. On more than one occasion, he has adjusted class lessons to incorporate student feedback, including a suggestion that they conduct class discussions without needing to raise their hands. More recently, Mr. Porcella has adjusted classes to confront and deter students from engaging in rude, distractive behavior” (P. Weyler).
Evidence #2: “Perceiving that the energy level was low, Nick took up a student’s suggestion that they re-enact the killing of Curley’s wife, with Mr. Porcella himself playing the victim. Students immediately perked up and the demonstration was lively without getting students off-track […]” (P. Weyler).
Evidence #3: “Mr. Porcella uses a variety of informal and formal methods to measure student learning and improve future instruction. During this lesson he used formal writing with a rubric, as well as informal questioning to determine student progress” (D. Carlson).
Evidence #4: “Mr. Porcella has improved significantly in the ease and confidence with which he makes both adjustments to practice within particular lessons (such as modifying an assignment or changing a focus question based upon what he has seen students struggling with or expressing curiosity about) and adjustments to his design of whole curriculum units. For example, in designing his unit for Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire, he focused on teaching the play through performance, and scaffolding students’ speaking and performing skills, in part because he recognized that such a focus could help transform the learning culture in the 11th grade class and make students more comfortable participating orally in class discussions (which is indeed what happened). He will sometimes extend discussions longer than initially anticipated when students show a strong interest in the question or topic under discussion, and is much more adept at re-wording questions on the spot if he finds that an initial phrasing is not garnering responses. He has also made different adjustments to how he scaffolds class discussions for both the 9th graders (for whom he focused on more carefully structuring discussion-based activities such as the character role-playing activity “Hot Seat” and fishbowl Socratic Seminars so that students would not talk over one another and could even learn to reflect, in a metacognitive way, on the effectiveness of the discussion), and for the more reticent 11th graders (for whom he developed an original scaffolding plan to foster wider participation in whole group discussion that involved students first talking in small groups about particular quotes selected in the text, and then sharing out both their own group’s insights and their response to the ideas of the previous group). He has also adjusted his unit planning in response to what he has learned of students interests, adding a mini-unit on technology that included an analysis of video games as a form of art/literature because so many students voiced a desire to explore this topic” (H. Roberts).
Explanation: I am willing to make changes on a yearly, monthly, daily, and even momentary basis. As a first-year teacher, I have intuited that the learning curve is steep from my role as a full-time student the year before. To focus on daily adjustments, I give students exit slips to see what they could benefit from talking about during the next lesson. I adjust plans all week long, even after I have created them (as mentioned above in 1A.4) far in advance. For example, during an early April lesson where we were writing thesis essays on technology in the ninth grade, I determined based on student feedback and progress check-ins that another drafting and revising day would be most beneficial for students to submit high-quality work. They used their time accordingly the second day and this allowed 83% of the class to submit essays on time, which was a dramatic increase from essays first and second quarter.