SRJ 4

Creating Connections Video

I really loved the inspiring and energetic tone that the teacher had
throughout the video. It is obvious that she is passionate about what she does,
and her students seemed engaged as well. There were a ton of teaching
strategies that she used to create connections from the students to the text. She
used scaffolding, which checks comprehensions and challenges the students in
their thinking. She also read to the students, modeling the fluency of our
language as well as tone of voice and inflection. She created experiences so
students could relate to the text (such as acting out a scene). She stopped
frequently throughout the text to ask questions to also check comprehension and
understanding of the material. She also made inferences to help students
develop foreshadowing skills. This was not listed in the video as a specific
technique, but I noticed she used a visual bubble chart on the board to break
down concepts and ideas for students. Visuals are so important in helping our
ELLs!

Blooms Taxonomy Challenge

There are some issues that one might encounter when teaching a lesson to
Juan, a 5th grader from Costa Rica. He is in the third level of language acquisition,
which is speech emergence. He now has about three thousand words in his
vocabulary and can begin to communicate in simple phrases. He can match
vocabulary with definitions, use word banks, write in a journal, and understand
simplified content material. Some issues that might occur would be teaching a
lesson or using vocabulary words that are beyond his comprehension level, he
might struggle with highlighting the important parts of the text, as well as
possibly comparing and contrasting information.
Three novels I have chosen are the first three Harry Potter Books. Those
include The Sorcerers Stone, Chamber of Secrets, and the Prisoner of Azkaban.
All three stories build on one another, so this helps the student build information.
Also, I am able to reference back to past incidents that might have happened to
Harry, and assist students in the foreshadowing skill of language
comprehension. Harry Potter books are very exciting, character filled (great to
use or imagine different voices), descriptive, and use unconventional words that

are silly, yet enforce how are language interprets and pronounces words (for
example, one of the spells).
The four learning styles are kinesthetic, tactile, auditory and visual. For the
kinesthetic aspect of learning, the class could participate in a group game of
Quidditch, the sport that is played in Harry Potter. This activity can lead to the
discussion of sports that we play, description of the tools used in their game, and
is it similar to anything we play (or something from Juans native country!). Or,
for the tactile experience I could have a Sorting Hat that groups the students
into groups, and then each group can come up with their own house name,
colors, and logo. Students will be drawing, labeling, and then showing the class
their group house. Then the groups can work together for later language arts
classwork based on the readings. For the auditory learner, the teacher can read
aloud or use books on tape for the reading. The teacher can bring the story alive
using Total Physical Response (this also helps visual learners). As modeled in the
video, the teacher can ask questions while they go through the story to check the
comprehension and students understanding of the text. The teacher can also
use scaffolding techniques to challenge the student to think deeper into the
content. For the visual learner, the students can categorize the characters of the
story in how they are related to one another. Students can also break down key
ideas of what is happening in each (or over a few) chapters in a journal. The
teacher can provide visuals of a timeline of events that is happening to Harry and
his friends so students can see the progression of the story (as well as any
similarities in events that happen).
There are many ways to build an activity that cover Blooms levels of
Taxonomy. Lets take the tactile experience of the House Sorting. The teacher
can bring in a silly hat (or a witchs hat), and in it can be numbers or some
type of symbol that will determine which group the student is in. So, student
will have to have knowledge of the shape, number or whatever symbol is
used and to recognize which group to go to (Levels 1-3). Then students can
identify what houses are used in the books they are reading, as well as the
animal, name, color, and what is special about the house. Then have students
create houses of their own. They can pick an animal to represent them, two
colors (reinforcing knowledge of colors, amount of colors, animal names), and
a name for the house (using descriptive words/parts of speech) (Levels1and
2). Students then work together to create their house. Students will then
share with the class their house, as well as why they chose certain animals,
colors, name, and what their house represents (Levels 1, 2 and 3). The rest of
the levels can be achieved while doing more classwork as the lesson goes on,

reinforcing all learning styles and teaching strategies through Blooms Levels
of Taxonomy.