Universal Design for Learning Lesson Plan
Teacher: Esmeralda Tully Date: 3/20/13 Subject: ELA
Common Core Standard:
NY.CC.5.W: Writing Standards
Research to Build and Present Knowledge
W.5.9.b: Apply grade 5 Reading Standards to informational texts (e.g., "Explain how an author uses reasons and evidence to support particular points in a text, identifying which reasons and evidence support which point[s]").
Behavioral Objective:
Utilizing the writing rubric and the RUBRIC strategy, the student will be able to accurately critique and assess at least two out of three “how-to” writing pieces.
Materials Needed:
- iPad
- Adobe Reader
- Spell Better—App on iPad
- How to Succeed in the Fifth Grade: Writing Rubric
- Student’s How to Succeed in the Fifth Grade: Final Draft
- RUBRIC strategy cue card
- Assortment of sample essays
- Examples of rubrics
Procedures:
- Activating Prior Knowledge
- Before using the RUBRIC strategy, the student needs to become more familiar with the concept of rubrics.
- The teacher will reintroduce the How to Succeed in the Fifth Grade: Writing Rubric to the student, and use it as an example to conduct a thorough explanation.
- Teacher will emphasize that the rubric lists the criteria, or what must be included in the essay, on the columns to the left. This essay must include: (1) steps for success, (2) reasoning, (3) logical order/sequence, (4) detailed directions, (5) audience, (6) language conventions.
- The teacher will then point to the four columns to the right of the criteria, and explain how these columns describe the different levels of quality, from excellent to poor. As concisely as possible, these columns explain what makes a good piece of work good, and a bad one bad.
- The teacher will give the student the iPad, which will contain a series of rubrics that the student can browse and ask questions about. The teacher will point to the criteria and the quality for each criteria that are expected for each essay.
- Teacher Modeling
- Teacher will model how to use a rubric to assess writing by utilizing the How to Succeed in the Fifth Grade: Writing Rubric and the student’s How to Succeed in the Fifth Grade: final draft. In doing so, the student will not only see the strategy demonstrated for them in a clear and explicit way, but they will understand why they received the grade that they did.
- The teacher will then model the use of the RUBRIC strategy:
- Read the rubric and the material to be graded
- Use the rubric to give an initial score
- Bring a buddy to help you rate again
- Review the material together
- Identify and award the scores together
- Check the scores again
- Guided Practice
- The teacher will provide the student with the How to Succeed in the Fifth Grade: Writing Rubric, the RUBRIC strategy cue card, and the iPad, which contains a How to Succeed in the Fifth Grade: sample essay.
- Now, the student will practice the strategy under the watchful eye of the teacher. The student will assess another author’s writing on Adobe Reader on the iPad. The Adobe Reader feature allows the student to add notes, highlight words, strikeout words, underline text, or freehand write directly on the writing selection.
- The teacher will prompt the student to go through the steps of the RUBRIC strategy, in order to give this author’s essay a score.
- The student will:
- Read the rubric and the material to be graded
- Use the rubric to give an initial score
- Bring a buddy to help you rate again (in this case, the teacher)
- Review the material together
- Identify and award the scores together
- Check the scores again
- The teacher will have an initial score in mind, and will support and monitor the student during this time to aid them in granting an accurate score.
- Independent Practice
- The student will be given three “how-to” essays to review on the iPad, the RUBRIC strategy cue card, and a writing rubric.
- During this stage, the teacher will not prompt or cue the student; the student must independently demonstrate their ability to meet the behavioral objective:
- Utilizing the writing rubric and the RUBRIC strategy, the student will be able to accurately critique and assess at least two out of three “how-to” writing pieces.
Assessment:
In addition to informally assessing the student throughout this lesson, the teacher will review student work during the ‘Bring a buddy to help you rate again,’ stage, and the subsequent stages, to determine whether they were able to accurately critique and assess at least two out of three “how-to” writing pieces.
UDL ELEMENTS:
Multiple Means of Representation:
1.2 Offer alternatives for auditory information: The teacher will use the thinking aloud strategy in order to demonstrate how to do the RUBRIC strategy and assess an essay using the writing rubric.
3.1 Activate or supply background knowledge: The teacher will activate background knowledge by helping the student to become more familiar with the concept of rubrics. The teacher will thoroughly explain its purpose and its components.
1.3 Offer alternatives for visual information: The teacher will display information in a flexible format by having the student read the essays on the iPad. Not only could the layout be varied, but the student good zoom in or out to increase or decrease the size of the text.
Multiple Means of Engagement:
7.2 Optimize relevance, value, and authenticity: By using the student’s final draft essay as an example to teach the child how to use rubrics to assess writing, the teacher is relating content to the child’s life (it is personalized and contextualized to the learner’s life), thereby recruiting interest.
8.3 Foster collaboration and communication: During modeling, guided practice, and independent practice the RUBRIC strategy encourages opportunities for interactions and supports. The teacher and the student work together during the ‘Bring a buddy to help you rate again,’ stage, and the subsequent stages to grade other author’s essays.
Multiple Means of Action and Expression:
4.1 Vary the methods for response and navigation: When using Adobe Reader to critique and assess the essays, the student is provided with alternatives for physically responding (alternatives to marking with pen and pencil).
5.2 Use multiple tools for construction and composition: Student will be provided with the Spell Better application, which serves as a spell checker, grammar checker, and a word prediction software.
6.1 Guide appropriate goal-setting: Teacher will post the lesson objective and the RUBRIC strategy cue card in an obvious place to guide student’s work.
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edTPA rubric components:
#4Justification of Instruction & Support:
Clear connections to research and/or theory
- Rubrics
- Students need a systematic way to help assess their own and their peers’ work. Nitko (2001) stated that when grading rubrics are shared with students, the learning aims are clarified. Although you provide grades and feedback to students regarding the quality of their work, self-assessments and peer assessments are necessary components to help students reflect on their performance. Such reflection can help students to locate their errors, determine a better way to approach a task, and learn the necessary information intended from performing the task.
Clear connections to the learner’s strengths & needs
- During the previous lesson, I noticed that Leydi neglected to use the rubric to guide her writing. She looked at it maybe once or twice, but she did not utilize it to help her compose her essay. When I asked her why she put it off to the side, she said that she still doesn’t understand how it works. With this in mind, I decided to focus this lesson on teaching Leydi to use the writing rubric to accurately critique “how-to” essays.
Plans for specific adaptations (if needed)
- I adapted the lesson by permitting her to utilize the Spell Better application as an assistive technology. Leydi is very bright, but needs some assistance with spelling. This application will help her to assess the spelling and grammar in the essays that she evaluates.
#5 Supporting Language/Communication Development
Identification of:
1) vocabulary and/or symbols
- In order to understand the requirements of this lesson, Leydi has to fully understand what a rubric is. You must properly introduce your students to rubrics if the students are to use this new tool effectively. Therefore, in the beginning of the lesson, the teacher will discuss what a writing rubric is and its components. The expectations for what is required in the essays that she will grade are specifically described on the rubric (the criteria and the quality).
2) language/communication demands related to behavioral objective
- Before engaging in the task, the teacher asks the student what is expected of them by the end of the lesson. The student should respond by restating the behavioral objective.
- In order to help Leydi with the language needed in order to carry out each task, I modeled the components beforehand, and gave her a RUBRIC strategy cue card, which she is permitted to use as a scaffold.
Justification: why supports will provide access to the learning task/behavioral objective
- The writing rubric acts as a framework for students to understand the expectations of an assignment before the project begins. Students’ understanding of the grading criteria and their importance in the product or performance is strengthened when they are involved in using rubrics.
- The RUBRIC strategy cue card acts as a scaffold for the student’s future reference or a springboard to activate memory on how to perform the task.
- The Spell Better application helps students to correctly assess grammar, by either speaking into the device or manually typing the words.
Justification: why supports will provide access to the demonstration of
1) language function
- As the student collaborates with the teacher during the ‘Bring a buddy to help you rate again,’ stage, and the subsequent stages, the child will develop greater language proficiency. The teacher and the student can have conversations about the writing and agree upon a score.
- The teacher modeling is a support that provides access to the demonstration of the language demands related to the behavioral objective.
- The Spell Better application demonstrates the correct spelling and the meaning of vocabulary.
2) learning task/behavioral objective
- Teacher modeling demonstrates how students can achieve the behavioral objective by breaking down the lesson, and modeling each step very carefully.
- The writing rubric acts as a support by helping to make expectations and grading procedures clear.
Justification: why supports move the learner toward maintenance and generalization or self-directed use of the targeted vocab/symbols or language/communication
- The support that the writing rubric and the RUBRIC strategy cue card, in conjunction with the support that the teacher will provide during modeling and guided practice, shall move Leydi towards generalization of the targeted vocabulary and communication. As I model the behavioral objective and the use of strategies, I will use thinking aloud so that it improves Leydi’s understanding of these processes. When it comes time for Leydi to complete the task independently, she will have witnessed a model of the performance, had an opportunity to practice the task with the teacher’s guidance, and had the teacher’s example and writing rubric to use as a reference.
#6 Planning Assessments to Monitor & Support Learning
Assessment: aligned with baseline data
- As I have learned in previous lessons, when Leydi is told what is required of her at the beginning of the lesson, she uses it to ensure that she carries out the behavioral objective. Therefore, this lesson will use a rubric to assess the student’s ability to follow the rubric in assessing other authors’ essays.
Assessment provides evidence for monitoring learner’s progress at different points
in the learning segment
- The student will not just be assessed at the end of the lesson. The teacher will informally monitor student progress through learner questions and responses during instruction, and teacher observation of the learner.
Assessment reflects appropriate levels of challenge and support (in light of
learner’s needs, strengths & behavioral objective)
- The teacher will use the information from informally monitoring the student in order to modify support and feedback as necessary.
- This lesson will appropriately challenge and support the child. They will have their graded essay from the previous lesson, the writing rubric, the RUBRIC strategy cue card, and the support from the teacher (which will be gradually removed) in order to aid them in assessing the essays.
- The student will be challenged to take what they have learned and apply it by independently assessing at least two out of three essays.
Assessment: designed to provide diagnostic information about where learner
may need additional support to make further progress and work toward
generalized and maintained OR self-directed use and knowledge and/or skills.
- By informally assessing the child through observations, the teacher will be able to make note of exactly where and why the child struggled during the lesson.
- At the end of the lesson, the teacher will use the rubric in order to formally assess whether the child met the behavioral objective.
REFLECTION
On Wednesday, March 20th, 2013, I completed the third ELA lesson with my fifth grade student, Leydi Sanchez. The behavioral objective of this lesson was “Utilizing the writing rubric and the RUBRIC strategy, the student will be able to accurately critique and assess at least two out of three “how-to” writing pieces. The idea is that if we state specifically what students are expected to do, then we can accurately assess if they met it.
During the ‘activating prior knowledge’ component at the beginning of the lesson, I decided that it was important to build on the student’s background knowledge of rubrics. In the previous lesson, Leydi had neglected to use the rubric to guide her writing. When I asked her why, she said that she still didn’t understand how it worked. Therefore, I reintroduced the “How to Succeed in the Fifth Grade: Writing Rubric” to Leydi, and used it as an example to conduct a thorough explanation. After discussing the components of the rubric (the columns on the left list the criteria for what must be included, and the columns on the right describe the different levels of quality), I gave her a series of rubrics to browse and then ask questions about. This part of the lesson clarified the vocabulary that the student needed to understand how to meet the behavioral objective.
Then, the lesson moved on to the teacher demonstration of the strategy to be learned. This stage is important because it has been proved that when teachers act as models, it makes the concept or skill clear and learnable, and it enables students to make meaningful cognitive connections. I modeled how to use a rubric to assess writing by utilizing the How to Succeed in the Fifth Grade: Writing Rubric” and the student’s final draft from the previous lesson. In this way, the student not only saw the strategy demonstrated for her explicitly, but she was able to fully understand why she received the grade that she did. In addition, I modeled the use of the RUBRIC strategy, and brought in Dr. Blue to be my buddy to help me rate again. This modeling not only helped her with the language needed in order to carry out each task, but it also acted as a good representation of collaboration.
The lesson progressed to the guided practice stage, where Leydi practiced the strategy under my guidance. The student was provided with the writing rubric, the RUBRIC strategy cue card, and the iPad, which contained a “How to Succeed in the Fifth Grade: sample essay.” With the teacher’s guidance and support, Leydi needed to practice assessing another author’s writing on Adobe Reader on the iPad. Leydi really loved this feature because she was able to add notes, highlight words, underline text, and freehand write directly on the selection. I noticed how she circled the misspelled words and wrote ‘sp.’ above them, just as I had done during modeling.
I prompted Leydi to go through each stage of the RUBRIC strategy, and collaborated with her during the ‘Bring a buddy to help you rate again,’ stage and the subsequent stages. During this time, the student developed greater language proficiency. The teacher and the student had conversations about the writing and agreed upon a score. In addition, not only did I offer support as necessary, but I informally monitored the student’s progress through observation. My anecdotal records indicate that she was utilizing the RUBRIC strategy cue card as a scaffold on how to perform the task. Leydi had accurately assessed the sample essay using the writing rubric, and through our collaboration and conversations, she was able to thoroughly explain her rationale.
Lastly, it was time for the student to independently demonstrate her ability to meet the behavioral objective, and the teacher did not prompt or cue the student. She was given three “how-to” essays to review on the iPad, the RUBRIC strategy cue card, and a writing rubric. Leydi was able to generalize what she had learned from my modeling and guidance, and she self-directed herself to carry out the behavioral objective. She was able to go through the six steps of the RUBRIC strategy without any prompting, invited me to collaborate with her, and illustrate why she awarded the scores that she did. Before I had arrived that day, I had a score for each sample essay in mind, and as a matter of fact, Leydi gave one of the essays a different score than I had originally thought of. After collaborating and conversing with Leydi, I actually ended up agreeing with her on the grade that she gave. I was so impressed with her ability to maintain and generalize the same skill with a different genre of essays. Leydi was able to accurately critique and assess all three of the “how-to” writing pieces, therefore, meeting the behavioral objective.
This lesson went extremely well. As I assessed her throughout the lesson, I modified the supports and challenges to appropriately build on her strengths and needs. I could tell how excited she was to grade other author’s essays and to see her own essay graded in front of her. In doing so, it gave her writing a real purpose, and she learned the significance of a writing rubric. In fact, she told me that she wished her teacher used writing rubrics so that she knows exactly what she needs to do to get a perfect score, and so that she can see why she got a particular grade in order to do better next time.
Although I knew the importance of teacher modeling and collaboration before this experience, these three lessons really brought it to life for me. Students not only need to see skills demonstrated for them in explicit ways, but they need to feed off others (whether it be their peers, their teachers, or both) to ask questions, learn new insights, and have their thoughts and ideas validated.
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