UCLA Center X TEP ELEMENTARY UNIT/ LESSON PLANNING COMMENTARY Your Name: Sarah Patterson Date: 3/4/14 Unit/Lesson

Title: Language Arts/ Reading: Zathura Grade Level and Content Area: Grade 5, writing Number of Students: 29 Total Amount of Time: 95 minutes

1. Learning Goals/Standards: What concepts, essential questions or key skills will be your focus? What do you want your students to know at the end of this unit/lesson? Our key focus for this lesson will be drawing conclusions and making inferences using logical reasoning about the text. By the end of this lesson, students will understand what I mean when I ask them to draw conclusions about something in the text, and what it means to make an inference. Although students already know how to draw conclusions and make inferences, they are often confused by the wording of questions about them. By the end of this lesson, students will know what conclusions and inferences are. 2. Rationale: Why is this content important for your students to learn and how does it promote social justice? This lesson widens the range of literature students have been exposed to in class, as it is the first science fiction story that they have read (to my knowledge, at least). This reading is more exciting and engaging than many of the readings in their Treasures text book, and it is my hope that this story and Jumanji will make students more excited about reading. 3. Identifying and supporting language needs: What are the language demands of the unit/lesson? How do you plan to support students in meeting their English language development needs including academic language!? We will review the vocabulary in this story, and use context clues and pictures to help us understand the meaning of some of the challenging scientific language in this story. Students will discuss in whole-class and small group discussion, giving students the opportunity to learn from their peers, and practice discussing books in both the formal language they often use in whole-class discussion, as well as the less-formal language they are more likely to use with their peers. 4. Accessing prior knowledge and building upon students backgrounds, interests and needs: How do your choices of instructional strategies, materials and sequence of learning tasks connect with your students" backgrounds, interests, and needs? I will read Juman i to students in a !ead-"loud to spike their interest in this story, and to help them make connections in this story to the pre#uel text. $he group activity that follows the whole-class reading is something my students and I have been working on and tailoring to their interests and needs. It is based on the %araphraser-&erifier-S#uee'er-Writer techni#ue we learned in (anguage "c#uisition, but I had to create new roles to work with the structures of our table groups. I created the role of predictor, and my students suggested the additional roles of Illustrator and )uestion "sker. *ecause drawing is so popular and there is not enough time for it in our classroom, I use this as the incentive for students to finish their written group activity. $he drawing activity is not always the same, and I am giving students different challenges that target different areas of comprehension. So, today their drawings force students to summari'e their reading. "nother day, I will have students draw the story from different characters+ perspectives. Some days, they will choose what they draw, which gives me an interesting glimpse into what my students are focusing on in our stories.

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. Acco!!odations: What accommodations or support will you use for all students including English #anguage #earners and students with special educational needs, i$e$ %&'E students and students with (E)"s!? E*plain how these features of your learning and assessment tasks will provide all students access to the curriculum and allow them to demonstrate their learning$ One accommodation that is structured into our group activity is the amount of time students are given to complete their assignment. The last stage, drawing, is not mandatory giving student groups that need more time additional time to answer their questions. One table, the Looney Tunes, often finishes very early, and I often come up with small assignments for them to complete, either another role that they have to complete in their writing, or an additional task to complete in their drawings. Today, I will also give students the opportunity to look through Jumanji once they are finished with all their tasks. ". #$eor%: Which theories support your unit/lesson plan? e*plain the connections! The group activity is guided by sociocultural learning theory, as students are each given a role that they have authority over, giving students the opportunity to be teachers while learning from their peers. 7. Reflection: (answer the following questions after the teaching of this unit/lesson) What do you feel was successful in your lesson and why? If you could go back and teach this learning segment again to the same group of students, what would you do differently in relation to planning, instruction, and assessment? How could the changes improve the learning of students with different needs and characteristics? I would change this lesson first by giving more time to reading Jumanji, perhaps giving this first story a full day on its own. However, I think it was really useful reading Jumanji and Zathura back to back, because they were able to make immediate connections between the two stories. If there was another day, I would even consider bringing in clips from the film version of Zathura. This lesson really could have taken up a full week of instruction on its own. I think giving my students more time to complete their group assignments would have given groups that needed more time the time they needed to fully engage with the storyboarding activity, and fit the gallery walk into the same day.

**COMMENTARY IS REQUIRED FOR ALL UCLA ELEMENTARY FORMAL OBSERVATIONS **

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