User:Natasha Rankine1

Return to ETAP 623 ||| Natasha's Mini Course

About me

My name is Natasha Rankine and this is my first semester in the CDIT program. I am currently in my 2nd year of teaching and couldn't be happier with my choice to become a teacher. I received my undergraduate degree from Queens College. My major was Education with a concentration in English.

My Topic/Purpose

For my Design Project I will be focusing on "Using News ELA to raise the reading level of the lower 3rd of any class".

PURPOSE

It is known that many students struggle with the fundamental skills of reading and comprehension. Using News ELA will help teachers help their students. News ELA has predesigned articles and lessons that are Common Core aligned. These lessons help struggling readers to raise their reading level to "on grade level"

Needs Assessment

Instructional Problem: As a teacher, our main goal should be student achievement. Ideally all of the students that we service will be reading on their correct grade level or above. Working in schools makes us realize that this is not always the case. Often time students are 2 or even 3 grade levels behind. This become extremely problematic as students get older and the content that they are responsible for becomes more difficult. With students and literacy there are multiple obstacles that get in their way of achieving their proper reading or lexile level. According to the National Assessment of Educational Process (NAEP) approximately 25% of all 8th graders in 2017 read below grade level and approximately 30% of 12 graders read below grade level. Obstacles such as vocabulary, pronunciation, and most importantly comprehension hinder students' ability to grow. In order for our students to excel in their future life endeavors, we need to promote literacy. student achievement in school is greatly correlated with life success.

What is to be Learned: ELA educators will learn how to integrate News ELA into their lessons in order to raise the exile level of their lower 3rd. Participants will learn to examine different articles and how to use them to maximize the effectiveness of the service. Participants will be encouraged to choose the articles based on the interests of their students.

The Learners: Learners will include secondary ELA educators teaching in Grade 7-12 environments. Learners will all have experience with CCSS standards and what each standard means. Additionally, learners will have some experience teaching reading strategies such as highlighting and annotating.Instruction and activities will be geared toward the classroom teacher although information could also be shared with students to help them navigate the website and to promote self motivated learning.

Prerequisites:

1. Basic knowledge of how to use a computer/laptop
2. Knows how to send a receive emails (participants should have a working email address)
3. Experience with using Google Classroom. (participants should know how to access google classroom without much assistance)
4. Know which students they are going to focus on. AKA their lower 3rd
5. Know how to assess data
6. Currently has data reflecting struggling students. Teachers must know which standards they want to focus on for their focus group of students

Analysis of the Learner and Context

• Middle School teachers. • Professional Development training • Confirm the identity of your target learners: • - middle school teachers. Some of the teachers are reluctant to try new things in the classroom. Others have a different point of view when it comes to student success. They all don’t necessarily believe in growth mindset. Determine what you need to know about your learner(s): -How much experience do you have with students who are reading below grade level? How have you tried to help struggling readers in the past? Locate the desired data or identify/design tools to collect it

Collect and analyze the data to produce a learner profile—

Verify the learner profile and determine how it will impact the design—

I will have 10 learners in the professional development. The learners have a range in experience with struggling readers. Also, they do have different opinions on struggling readers. This was confirmed through conversations with them. This will impact design because for some learners, they already have a wall up. That wall needs to knocked down before any learning using Achieve 3000 can take place. Also, other learners see how it can be helpful but think that it would be too time consuming and “doing too much”. This will also impact design because although the learner believes that their students can learn regardless of their level, they fear the extra work. To combat this issue, I would have to show learners how easy and time efficient this is. Learners all have 3 or more years experience in the classroom as an ELA teacher. 6 of the participants are women and 4 are men. The learners do not have any noted cognitive or physical disabilities that would prevent them from completing this Professional Development. Motivations: For the PD, learns will need tom be intrinsically motivated to complete this. How will you create a motivation?: motivation will be created on the first day of instruction. Learners will be asked “how do struggling readers hold you back as an educator?” This makes the teacher or learner in the PD the main attraction. This question makes it about them and not their student. Although the student is a stakeholder in this, the teacher needs to see how helping struggling readers become better readers can help them in the future. Most of the learners are from a Caribbean country. This impacts instruction because Caribbean teachers usually have a different perspective on student learning than America does. They are use to more teacher centered instruction than student centered. This will affect instruction because with Achieve 3000 children are urged to work either by themselves or with a partner/group. Discussion Protocals will also be introduced to this group. They will understand that not all talking is “bad”

Performance Objectives

Course-level objectives

Teachers will be able to:

1. " Develop" an understanding of to why News ELA is important to the development of you and your students
2. Create a News ELA login and use it
3. Assign articles that are aligned to the standards
4. Prepare reading level aligned non-fiction texts to your students
5. Teach students how to log into their own class on News ELA
6. "'Create"' a differentiated lesson plan using the News ELA articles
7. Recommend next steps for their students based on the results from the assessment
8. Use Google Classroom to retrieve their classwork and hand work in through google classroom

Task Analysis

Lesson 1: Motivation: Why am I doing this? How can it benefit me? What is News ELA - read articles revolving around reading level and success in life. have them discuss which students make their job easier, is it the ones that "get it"? Explain how News ELA can help raise students reading level

-have them understand that as a teacher it is their job to teach everybody, not just the students who are on level. Growth Mindset. All progress is good progres Lesson 2: Create a News ELA login and log into it successfully -

Lesson 3: Find articles that are aligned to standards that the students are having difficulty with -article about the importance of finding high interest articles

Lesson 4:Assign articles to students

Lesson 5: Teach students how to log into the proper class

Lesson 6: Find the data of the students that are part of your lower 3rd.

Unit 1: Motivation

Lesson 1 : Motivation: Reflect on prior knowledge and experience reading the lower 1/3 of a class.

Lesson 2: Explain and understand the importance of differentiated instruction and using News ELA as a tool

Unit 2: Application

• • UNDER SONSTRUCTION**

Lesson 3: Find articles that are aligned to standards that the students are having difficulty with -article about the importance of finding high interest articles

Lesson 4:Assign articles to students

Lesson 5: Teach students how to log into the proper class

Lesson 6: Find the data of the students that are part of your lower 3rd.

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