Instructional Commentary- Edtpa PDF

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Instructional Commentary 1. Lessons shown in video I include to video clips in my edTPA. Both video clips are from an activity during guided instruction from Lesson Plan 2. Video Clip 1 shows where I ask students to define the vocabulary associated with the Learning Segment. Also in Video Clip 1, I continue modeling how to pull out supporting details from a text (Instructional Material 1.10) to start this activity. After I complete a few sentences while modeling, I ask students to continue to read the text aloud and justify whether a detail from a text is interesting or important. Show in this video is whole group discussions and one on one discussions between myself and the students. Also shown in Video Clip 1, are students building on each other’s ideas. Video Clip 2 continues on with the same activity in Lesson Plan 2. Video 2 shows students collaborating with each other to use the details we found in the text to write an original supporting detail sentence. Video Clip 2 also shows me modeling how to come up with an original supporting detail sentence based on the details found in the text.

2. Promoting a positive environment and classroom management During this video, I show responsiveness to each of my students. I give each student a chance to talk and answer questions when they raise their hands. I also made sure to clarify what each student said if they answered quietly to make sure each student heard what the other student said. Throughout the video, I pose questions after each sentence read in the text (instructional material 1.10) to make sure students are comprehending what we are reading in order for students to be able to accurately summarize the text. I demonstrate responsiveness to my students by inviting them to interact with the new content they are learning in a way that keeps them engaged in their reading. I also show responsiveness to my students when I clarify what they say throughout the lesson. I show that I am listening and understanding what they are talking about. I also provide positive feedback throughout the lesson and video clip. I often tell my students “Great job!” or “Good job!” after they provided an answer to the questions I ask while reading the text. This builds up student confidence and makes them more confident to answer and participate in answering more questions throughout the lessons. Several times throughout the lesson, students had varying opinions on whether a detail was interesting or important. I promoted a positive classroom environment by giving each student a chance to state their opinion and deciding as a group which (interesting or important) makes more sense. An example of this is seen at 5:04 in Video Clip 1. 5 of the 6 of my students responded that they thought the detail was interesting, when one of my students thought the detail was important. When I asked this student why she thought the detail was important, she stated she was in between. I then asked her what’s making her think she is in the middle? She stated, “because it said in the other one about the rabbit’s appearance and the main idea is how rabbits have adapted over the years.” I then responded by asking “So is it talking specifically about what their ears have done to help them survive?” The student responded “no” and then responded that the detail was interesting. As a group, we help the student understand why the detail was interesting instead of important. Another example of a positive classroom environment is shown during Video Clip 2 at 0:20 when there was a variety of opinions whether a detail was interesting or important. At 0:29, one of my students, in disagreement with another student, said “I get why Dax would say that, but I am pretty sure it is interesting because it is showing how they kind of adapted but its not the only thing the sentence talked about.” This shows a positive classroom environment because it shows the students respect each other and respect each other’s opinions. Using terms such as “I agree because” or “I disagree with you because” allows students to respond with an alternate response in a respectful way, which is what I encourage in my classroom.

3a. How did you get students talking about the lesson goals and articulating why they are important? In the Video Clip 1, I start out the activity be asking students to define the vocabulary that we have learned so far in our Learning Segment. This is the second time in this lesson that we have defined the vocabulary associated with the Learning Segment and this specific Learning Target (Students will learn how to pull out the most important details from a nonfiction text relating to the main idea and compose a supporting detail sentence). Prior to Video Clip 1, students read the Learning Target aloud and we discussed the vocabulary in the Learning Target and how this vocabulary was going to be used in the Lesson Plan and remainder of the Learning Segment. In Video Clip 1, at 0:12 I ask students “Who remembers what a main idea is?” I give students a few seconds before I call on someone. I call on one of my students, who says, “a main idea is what the passage is mainly about” and I repeat this to act as a confirmation that I agree. I ask students what a supporting detail is and another student responds that it “supports your main idea”. I give this student positive feedback by saying “Good job”. At 0:34 in Video Clip 1, I ask students “What things do we include in our main idea sentence?” One student answers “In the text” another student follows by adding in “the author” and I call on another student and they say “you include what the text is mainly about” and I call on another student and they gave me an answer that was already stated so I led students to the finish off their response by saying “we just need one more thing.” After this my student responded that we need “a word to explain like how he examined or explained.” I knew this student meant that we needed a vivid verb, but instead of offering the answer, I ask a leading question and say “So what is that called?” and the group responded hesitantly by saying a “vivid verb”. We continue going through the vocabulary associated with this lesson and students define what an interesting detail is and what an important detail is. Before we started to read the text (Instructional Material 1.10), we read the main idea sentence we wrote from the day before. After we start reading the nonfiction text (Instructional Material 1.10), I give students multiple opportunities to demonstrate they are understanding the differences between important and interesting details. After each student reads, I ask the students whether it is an important detail or an interesting detail. At 3:13 in Video Clip 1, I ask students to justify their answer for the first time in this lesson. This shows the students interacting and engaging with the vocabulary beyond knowing the definition. At 3:26 a student responds to my question of whether the detail was interesting or important by stating it is important “because it has something to do with the main idea.” Throughout both Video Clips, I continue to ask students to justify their answers while reading the text (Instructional Material 1.10). In Video Clip 2, I get students thinking about and practicing writing a supporting detail sentence on their own. At 5:37 in Video Clip 2, I transition from having the students decide whether a detail is interesting or important, to writing the supporting detail sentences out. This is an important portion of the Lesson because it is the Learning Target for Lesson 2 (Students will learn how to pull out the most important details from a nonfiction text relating to the main idea and compose a supporting detail sentence). When writing the supporting detail sentences in this section of the Lesson Plan, I follow a “I model”, “We do it together”, than a “You do it together”. This allows me to model how to write a supporting detail sentence one more time before asking students to do it themselves to remind them how to do it. At 7:03, after modeling writing a supporting detail sentence, I ask students “does that make sense how I put that into my own words instead of just copying down the two sentences for my supporting details? Why did I put it into my own words?” I ask my students why I put it into my own words because this is an important step in understanding the Learning Target for this lesson. At 7:50, one student responds to my question by saying “because it is a summary and for summaries you can’t just right down the exact words.” I further expand her

answer to and say “If I am combining two sentences, I need it into one” and another student jumps in and says “and you don’t want it to be a paragraph” and I expand this and say “yeah, you don’t want it to be a paragraph for just one supporting detail”. The students building off of each others answers and participating in the conversation had the student talking about this Learning Target (or lesson goal) and talking about why it was important. 3b. How did you engage students? Before I started the video, I modeled how to pick out important details in a text and differentiate important and interesting details in a text. Students followed along with me with their green and yellow crayons. By using the different colors and having students follow along with me as I was modeling, I was able to make sure the students were focused on and engaged in the lesson. Using the different colors also provided the students a visual when they went to construct their three supporting detail sentences. Throughout the lesson and Video Clips, I kept students engaged by having students take turns reading and asking frequent questions about the text to the students. By having students take turns reading the text, they were able to interact with the text in an engaging way. My initial idea was to read the text aloud to the students sentence by sentence and have them decide whether the sentence was interesting or important, but I decided it would be more engaging for students to take turns reading aloud. All of these students are struggling readers, so I did have to provide support and clarification a couple times throughout the lesson. All the other students in the group were able to follow along and actively engage with the text as their peers were reading. I also engaged students by using a variety of different teaching strategies throughout the lesson plan. I rotate between modeling, group instruction, working with partners, and working individually. This makes the lessons more engaging because students are being able to interact with their peers while learning. 3c. How did you connect the lessons to students’ prior knowledge? Before the video started, we went over the vocabulary from the previous lesson. We also went over fiction vs nonfiction again, connecting prior knowledge to this lesson. By going over the vocabulary from the previous lesson in each new lesson, I am linking the previous lessons to the current lesson. At the start of this Video Clip 1, we go over the vocabulary associated with this lesson in specific. This is done to connect what they know about supporting details to the new vocabulary associated with summarizing nonfiction. In each lesson, we go over what we learned and did the previous day and how it will relate to what we are going to complete today. This connects each lesson to student’s prior knowledge from the previous lesson. In order to connect the learning segment to student’s prior knowledge, we compared and contrasted fiction and nonfiction and the graphic organizers associated with summarizing fiction and nonfiction. This allowed students to connect their prior knowledge they had from summarizing fiction and the vocabulary and steps related to this and use it for beginning to learn how summarize fiction. I also linked each lesson by using the same texts in each lesson (Instructional Materials 1.9, 1.10, and 1.11). By the end of the Learning Segment, we had 3 complete summaries of nonfiction texts to use as models during our whole class summarizing nonfiction unit. Completing three summaries from start to finish span out across the duration of three lessons allowed students to connect each lesson to the next. 4a. How did you get students to think about the content? At the beginning of Video Clip 1, we go over the vocabulary associated with this specific lesson and activity. This would be the second time we are going over this vocabulary during this lesson. We previously went over interesting vs. important details right before I modeled how to pick out

and differentiate interesting vs. important details using a different nonfiction text in a prior portion of Lesson 2. Going over the vocabulary repeatedly allows students to think about the content of the lesson and keep in mind the Learning Target for this specific portion of the Learning Segment. The majority of both Video Clips show me interacting with my students and asking them prompting questions. I ask them the same question over and over again to emphasize the importance of understanding how to differentiate interesting vs. important details and the importance of being able to justify and explain their thinking. After each sentence of the text (Instruction Material 1.10) was read aloud, students were asked to justify whether the detail was interesting or important, which can be seen starting at 3:00 on Video Clip 1 and from 0:00 to 5:37 on Video Clip 2. This had students thinking about the content they were learning by using the vocabulary associated with the lesson and interacting with the text and Learning Target. This allows my students to think about the content they are learning. 4b. How did you get students to reference the text to support their conclusions? There were many opportunities for the students to reference the text to support their conclusions. After the students read a sentence in the text, the students were asked whether this was an interesting or an important detail and most of the time, were asked to justify their answer. I was asking students to justify why this is an important or an interesting detail and key points I was listening for to check for understanding were points relating to the main idea sentence we drafted the day before. In Video Clip 1 at 3:56, my student states the detail that we read in not interesting “because it’s not saying anything about how the rabbits either survived or adapted.” This student related the text back to the main idea sentence which showed me he understood that the supporting details need to relate directly back to the main idea sentence which in this case was “In the text, Adaptation Study: The Rabbit, the author examines how rabbits have adapted over the years”. The student referenced the text and the main idea sentence to state that the detail was interesting rather than important because it did not talk about how rabbits adapted, which is the main idea of the passage. An example of a student referencing the text to support their conclusion is shown in Video Clip 2 at 2:13 after I asked the students to justify whether a sentence from the text (Instructional Material 1.10) was interesting or important. The student said the sentence was an interesting detail because “it just talks about how it can affect them and what effects the predator to slow down and lost track of the animal.” Through both Video Clip 1 and Video Clip 2, students reference the text to support conclusions on why a sentence from the text (Instructional Material 1.10) was interesting or important.

5a and 5b. What would you change to improve your lesson for students and why do you think these changes would improve student learning? During this lesson that I recorded, I would change a couple things to improve instruction for my students. Instead of completing this whole section as a whole group, I would allow students to do some partner work to discuss decisions on interesting or important. I would switch from whole group to small group often. For example, I would have each student read a sentence and then as a whole group we would decide if the sentence is an important or interesting detail and then break into pairs to complete the next three sentences in pairs while I walk around and monitor student responses. We would then go over the sentences they completed as pairs as a whole group and have each pair justify whether they thought one sentence was an interesting or important detail. I believe this change would help students and promote more positive group interactions through collaboration as well as further engage students in comprehending the material. This would improve this lesson by allowing to hear and debate with peers to gain a deeper knowledge or important vs. interesting. Another important change I would make to

improve the lesson would be allowing more students to input ideas before clarifying the correct answer myself. This is a complex mini unit and it is hard to fit everything I wanted to fit in into three lessons. I found that I rushed myself during this lesson with the minimal time we had left in the intervention time. In order to improve the lesson and improve student learning, I would give more students time to answer the questions and input feedback to promote more student conversation. This would improve their learning by allowing more collaboration with their peers. Collaborating with peers is important to student learning because it inspires diverse thinking, enhances problem-solving skills, and improves critical thinking. Students are able to bounce ideas off of each other and hear opinions of other students, broadening their learning....