Special Education in the Literacy Block 8:30-9:00 reading activity 9:00-10:15 Lecture/Activity (special education in the literacy block) 10:30-11 Unit Planning 11:00-11:45 Unit Planning

Notes…

Follow Up: IEPs

Educational Assistants/Special Education Teacher In some circumstances other educators will push into your room during the literacy block. Without good planning on your part that person will sit at the back of the room and listen for 100 minutes! Balanced literacy (grouped by readiness), computer time, stations, art, writing…) Possibility of using another room?

Recap Listening skills are very important and can be taught and assessed in each grade level Talking has 2 different angles: talking for better understanding and talking to communicate information. When teaching the later, break it down. When assessing the later, break it down! Like PE, the arts it is easy to just ask kids to present their work without actually teaching them presentation skills

Lesson Plans Italics mean for December

Report Card Learning skills Arts (once a year, minimum every term for me) Social studies is taught in the literacy block by the lit. teacher(different in 7/8) Media literacy??? Communication, understanding???

The Unit Big picture Integrated Weeks to months of work More imagination here that hard work Most important part of the year???

Planning the Unit There may only be 2-3 units each term (3 term year with progress report) The units for the literacy block will have to integrate all of the LA expectations and different Arts (overall). Framing a few big questions works very well for this! Now you have flexibility in your day to day lessons-they all relate back to the theme/question!

Backwards? We will be planning our unit a bit differently…you already have the lesson plan in place and will plan the unit around the lesson…

Planning the Unit What overall expectations will you be assessing (of)/reporting on (Reading, writing, oral, arts) on the next report card

Framing the Questions Units should have a critical question and/or task that tie all the subjects together Your lesson had a critical question now we ask bigger questions/create bigger tasks to bring the unit together

Hints Often (like for PED 3140) units come out of great lesson plans…you have a great lesson and then branch out from there What is the critical task/question for the lesson and how could you work that into other subject areas? The assessments in the subject areas will be different but there is a common theme

Then… You create a very rough plan of what lessons need to be taught in each subject area in order to complete the critical task You pick 2 learning skills per subject area/lesson/assignment and make sure they are all covered

Then… You still have to flush out the various lessons with lesson plans, formative assessments, running records…but- You can react to teachable moments as you please because you know where you are going You can choose movies, games, field trips and other fun stuff that remain in context

Finally Units take years to perfect and get better every year Well planned and organised units are one of the differences between being a pretty good teacher and being a pro

Does not need… Specifics on what lessons will teach what and exactly when Exact assessment strategies Exact order of events