Step 1 – Choose Text
- “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost
Sept 2 – Plan and Cluster Several Questions of Varying
Cognitive Demand
Step 3 – Introduce the Model to the Students
Step 4 – Conduct the Discussion
Step 5 – Review and Summarize the Discussion
Step 6 – Evaluate the Discussion with the Students Based on
Previously Stated Criteria
Questions Types
Remembering – Recall, restate or remember learned
information
-
Explain/summarize the poem’s four stanzas in
four sentences or less.
-
How does the poem end?
-
Without looking, what is the most memorable line
of the poem.
Understanding – ask students to make sense of the
information by interpreting and translating what is learned.
-
What do you think the narrator means by the two
roads? Are they literal or metaphorical?
-
What do you think the narrators feelings are
about the path not chosen?
-
What is learned from the line “yet knowing how
way leads on to way?” How does this apply to real life? Why is there doubt?
-
What is the theme of the poem?
Applying – asks students to use information in a context
different from the one in which it was learned
-
Can you relate this scenario to anything in your
life or someone else’s life? How does it apply to many senior high school
students lives?
-
Can you think of any other real life situations
to which this scenario could be related?
Analyzing – This asks students to break down the learned
information into its parts
-
In the narrator’s opinion, which path is better?
-
With the information in the poem, do you think
the narrator’s opinion is bias? Provide evidence.
-
Can we trust the narrator’s opinion, even if it
is bias?
-
This poem has been rated 5/500 on a poetry
website. Do you agree with the high rating of the poem?
Evaluating – asks students to make decisions based on
reflection and assessment.
-
With the information provided in the poem, what
decision would you have made at that point in time? With the interpretations
we’ve already made about the results of the decision, do you think you would
have any regrets?
-
In the future, as a parent/guardian/role model
in someone’s life, what would you do to help this person make the decision?
Assume you have made this same decision in the past; would you help this person
make the same decision, or the other decision?
Creating – asks students to develop new ideas and
information
-
How can the poem be used to inspire young
people?
-
How can the poem be used as a warning to young
people?
-
How can decisions shape our whole lives?
I appreciated this assignment for two reasons. The first is that it was a practical way to work through the textbook. Although the text is not very long, it would be difficult to investigate all of the teaching methods in depth in the amount of time we had before our pre-internships started. It was great to work with our peers and see how they teach. I picked up on new techniques both being taught directly from the text and from the way my peers taught the lessons.
ReplyDeleteThe second reason I appreciated this lesson is that I was able to practice the new technique in a safe environment. This technique, it turns out, played a key role in my lessons during my pre-internship. The methods described in the chapter worked very well, in an organic way at the university level, but the high school students needed a little more prompting. I think that if I worked with the students more they would understand the technique and get more involved.
This was my favorite assignment from the class this semester. I think it was invaluable in what it could have taught us, but was a little restricted because of time. It also would have been beneficial to do this assignment toward the beginning of the semester. There was much to learn from these mini-lessons and teaching techniques that could have been applied in the pre-internship. If we had worked on this assignment earlier we would have had more time to research the lessons and techniques that the others taught.
After teaching in my pre-internship, and when reflecting upon my classmates micro-lessons I began to think about resources for lessons. There are many great ideas in our text Instruction: A Models Approach by there is so much more out there. I looked into some old text books and found one in particular to be very useful for English lessons. Teaching English by Design: How to create and Carry Out Instructional Units by Peter Smagorinsky. Not only does Smagorinsky have a lot of great ideas but he also includes resources that could easily be implemented in any classroom and scenarios to go along with many lessons.
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