Course Overview
The aim of this course is to prepare students for teaching the fundamentals of writing and literature in secondary schools. This course employs classroom demonstrations, model curricula, and current developments in linguistics and literary analysis. Field experiences are included with this course. This course includes the Conceptual Framework for Teacher Education and CAEP Standards.
Objectives
At the conclusion of this course, students should be able to:
· Describe and evaluate the literacy learning needs of adolescents.
· Evaluate the effectiveness of different instructional organizations in meeting those needs.
· Describe, construct, and evaluate instructional activities for reading comprehension and critical literacy.
· Describe, construct, and evaluate instructional activities for reading fluency.
· Describe, construct, and evaluate instructional activities for word study and/or vocabulary.
· Describe, construct, and evaluate instructional activities for writing (mechanics, craft, and genre).
· Design and evaluate an organization for secondary school literacy instruction. This design should be accomplished through analyzing the needs of your students, evaluating effective instructional practices for those needs, and synthesizing your analysis and evaluation to provide effective, engaging, and balanced literacy instruction.
Logistics
This course typically is offered in the Fall and you must be accepted into Phase I.
Assignments generally include but are not limited to
Phase I Focus Lessons**
Three times throughout the semester you will be asked to teach a lesson in your classroom and reflect on it. Each lesson will have a different focus. Classroom management/planning, Student Learning, and Differentiated Instruction.
Teaching Folio Components
You will write your content expertise and philosophy of education. Final drafts of these documents are uploaded and assessed as part of your teaching folio
Contextual Analysis**
This can be completed along with your other interns in your school. Describe and analyze your school community including characteristics and performance. Include your perceptions and analysis of material available on the web about your school and your own experience in your school. Address factors such as socioeconomics, diversity, achievement gaps, parent involvement, faculty turnover, and business partnerships. Specifically address how the school culture promotes equity. Address the differences between this school and your own background and life experiences. (This is not a group project.) Talk about these differences and how you can reduce your biases and prejudices as well as those that your students may have.
Content Expertise**
Write a well-developed description about how you have become an expert in English, the area in which you are being certified. Include a summary of your academic preparation and performance and all other activities or experiences that have contributed to your knowledge in the content area.
Teaching Philosophy**
Construct a well-developed articulation of your beliefs about teaching and learning in English Language Arts (ELA) and your approach to optimizing student performance. Your philosophy must be interwoven with theory and research that extends and substantiates points. Relate your approaches to teaching with the NCTE/CAEP Standards and how you will support and sustain these standards during your internship and how you can continue to do so when teaching in the future.
The Literacy Project/Unit Plan**
The Literacy Project/Unit Plan includes three separate sections, a research paper, a unit plan, and a reflection on how to evaluate student learning. The research paper outlines best practices in English Language Arts. The unit plan includes the planning and construction of a cohesive set of lessons (approximately 500 minutes of instruction), support materials and assessments that address appropriate content standards targeted during the intern’s full time teaching portion of the phase 2 internship. The reflection on student learning comprehensively examines how student learning will be evaluated throughout the unit plan.
Students must complete and receive an overall grade of “Proficient” in order to progress from Phase 1.
The curriculum project needs to include a Description of Exemplary Literacy Practice to provide the theoretical underpinnings of their unit. The unit itself is modeled after Maryland’s unit plan outline and includes the Unit Overview, Unit-at-a-Glance Organizer/Lesson Seeds, and Individual lesson plans. Finally, teacher-candidates will examine their formal and informal assessments and the Pre and Post Assessment to determine if the unit accurate teaches what it is supposed to teach and if the assessments are accurately measuring what will be taught.
Description of Exemplary Literacy Practice
This is a formal research paper and presentation that outlines best practices in teaching English Language Arts. Teacher candidates should address reading, writing, grammar, vocabulary, and critical literacy. Undergraduates can work on these in pairs and must cite at least two journal articles and one theoretical text each. Graduate students will complete one topic individually and must cite at least three journal articles and two theoretical texts.
Unit Plan Overview, Sequence, and Lesson Seeds
You will include an overview, a sequence, and then your lessons that you wrote out in class will act as lesson seeds. An example of the overview and sequence are below. Teacher candidates are expected to have something similar but can make some modifications to fit your county’s criteria. Examples can be found here:
http://mdk12.org/instruction/academies/resources_2012/ELA/eea_ela2012.html
Reflection on informal and formal assessments and Pre- and Post- data. (25 Points)
1. How do your formal and informal assessments help inform your instruction? Please list each item and how you will evaluate it.
2. What are your pre- and post- tests and what do they measure?
3. In the future, how might you determine your students’ responses to your literacy instruction? In other words, how might you gather data on your students’ understanding in your future teaching?
4. Why might it be important to gather data on the students’ responses to your teaching? How can student response data inform your instruction? Be specific.
5. In the future, how will you collect and analyze your own reflection on your teaching? Why might it be important to gather data on your reflection on your teaching?
**Key Assessment