Learning Letter

               The assignments that we have had in this class have been some of the most fun projects that I have done in a while, even though that sounds like an oxymoron. The book talk was the very first presentation we had and I thoroughly enjoyed getting to talk about a book I loved to the rest of my fellow future teachers and gave them some ideas on how they could implement the book I picked in to their curriculum. Being the first presentation of the quarter, I did not time out my presentation that well and found myself rushing to finish the rest of what I had to say near the end, so in the future I would probably do well to time out my presentation in a more realistic way, but other than that I fulfilled every requirement and did not bore everyone to death. The next presentation, the mini-lesson, was probably the least painful group assignment that I had ever had. Not only did it not heavily rely on my group members’ works, but my group members actually completed their parts on time and there was not even a slacker in the group that I could point out. The topic of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” is one of my favorite short stories and getting to do a lesson on the theme of Gothicism (plus including a movie trailer from a recent movie) made it the most active lesson that I had ever come up with and I incorporated that activeness in to my three-week unit plan. The feedback that I received from the rest of the class at the end of my mini-lesson was very insightful and I will definitely be taking their suggestions for improvement to heart. The last assignment, the three-week unit plan, was by far the largest assignment I have ever had in my academic career. I put so much of myself in to that assignment that it does not really matter to me what grade I get, I did it to the best of my ability and that is all that matters to me. This being said, there are still some things I would like to improve on it, such as spending a little more time on the smaller sections of the unit rather than putting literally all of my effort towards the bigger sections so that when it came time to complete the smaller sections I was out of energy. Hopefully they did not suffer too greatly because of that, and other than that, until I receive more feedback on it, I do not really know what I would do differently for that assignment.

            Also in this class, we explored many theories and concepts on teaching literature to adolescents. Many of the theories that we talked about became very useful when it came time to start writing out my lesson plans and come up with ways to not make them stale and repetitive. Perhaps the most useful piece that we read for this class was the book Readicide by Kelly Gallagher. This book talked about how the overabundance of work emphasized on just a few texts was enough to get students to lose interest in reading for luxury outside of the classroom. As a future Language Arts teacher, this is one of my biggest fears in the future of my career and it was comforting to read about ways that I can help prevent this from happening. The most useful concept I felt that I learned about in this class is including pop culture in the classroom. I was assigned to exemplify this concept in my mini lesson and did so by showing a modern movie trailer that included a theme in the text that students were supposed to have read. By showing this trailer, students were found to be engaged in the lesson and willing to participate in a seemingly average activity. Getting students engaged in lessons is one of the biggest challenges I feel that I have to overcome, so it was awesome to find a way to get them to the level of engagement that I wanted. One theory we learned about in class was about the “pedagogy of the oppressed.” In this theory, passive students are likened to being oppressed because they are not actively participating in the learning community, and instead are being taught at. After reading about this, I agree that students need to be involved in the learning process, otherwise the learning process is useless and students might as well just be lectured at with earmuffs on, losing out on all of the potential learning that is trying to be offered to them in the wrong way.

            Finally, this course has made be grow vastly as a future educator. I feel that I can finally complete an EdTPA lesson plan in full without missing any crucial parts or details. I grasped the concept of academic language from this class and after that it was like all of the pieces started to just fall in to place for me. By completing all of the assignments and actually reading all of the readings that we had, I was able to get an insight of what the future holds for me, and I see myself liking it every challenging step of the way. For as long as the unit plan assignment was, I pretty much actually enjoyed doing it because I knew exactly what I was learning from completing it and did not feel like I was just completing it for a grade. Getting to see all of my peers present in front of the class and have us act like we were their students was both entertaining and allowed me to reflect on my own teaching when I was able to provide feedback for them. I guess it made me hold myself accountable for the commentary I was giving them and making myself follow it as well. I know that this class has the potential for scaring off potential educators and make them second-guess themselves, but for me, this class made me all the more excited to move on and up in to the world of English education.

Michael Potesky mini lesson EdTPA lesson plan

TPA Lesson Plan #___2____

Course: Sophomore Honors English

1. Teacher Candidate	Michael Potesky	Date Taught	N/A
Cooperating Teacher(s)	Jamee Bell David West Valentin Kucheryaviy Kendrick	School/District	Mead High School/Mead
2. Subject	Edgar Allen Poe	Field Supervisor	Diane Ball
3. Lesson Title/Focus	Gothicism in The Fall of the House of Usher	5. Length of Lesson	20 Minutes
4. Grade Level	10th grade honors

6. Academic & Content Standards (Common Core/National)	RL.9-10.4: Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in the text, including figurative and connotative meanings; analyze the cumulative impact of specific word choices on meaning and tone (e.g., how the language evokes a sense of time and place; how it sets a formal or informal tone).
7. Learning Objective(s)	Given the story The Fall of the House of Usher and a viewing of the trailer for the 2015 movie Crimson Peak, students will determine key words/phrases and characteristics that make up the tone and setting of a story by analyzing and describing the setting and characters in the short story The Fall of the House of Usher using a bubble map. Student Friendly LO: I can now visualize how words/phrases and characteristics of a story help determine the tone and setting of a piece of literature.
8. Academic Language demands (vocabulary, function, syntax, discourse)	Vocabulary: Setting, tone, analyze, phrase, sojourn, bubble map, metaphor, figurative, formal. Students will have already learned what most of the terms mean from previous literature units taught, all except for sojourn and bubble map. At the beginning of class, the teacher will introduce the idea of a bubble map and will go over any words in the story that students will not have understood in their reading.

9. Assessment

Formative Assessment: This lesson will revolve around students breaking up in to pairs or groups of their own choice in order to fill out two bubble maps that explain both the setting and the characters in in either just the story The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allen Poe or both the story and the trailer for the film Crimson Peak. The completion of this bubble map and the subsequent sharing of the map by the group with the whole class in order to create a giant bubble map will determine if the students have received full participation points for the day. If the students are able to completely fill out the bubble maps and appropriately contribute examples to the whole-class bubble map, then they will have met the basic level of both the learning objective and the core standard by understanding what it means to identify what makes up a setting/tone. **Attach** all assessment tools for this lesson

10. Lesson Connections

This lesson is supported by this article: http://www.ric.edu/astal/litstrategies/mappingstrategies.html. This article says that students seem to better understand the setting and characters of a story better by mapping out all of their traits on a map in order to visualize the images and tones that are created by key words in a story, as opposed to simply reading the story and asking to interpret it. Also, the use of the visual (the trailer for Crimson Peak) helps those students who are primarily visual learners to gain a mental picture of what the setting of the story The Fall of the House of Usher might have been like in the mind of Poe (http://filmschoolrejects.com/features/crimson-peak-inspirations-guillermo-del-toro.php). Before this lesson, students will have already learned about what the term setting means and would have had some practice analyzing the settings of less-complex stories. They would have also been introduced to the meanings of metaphor and formal language, which are terms that may be used frequently in this lesson. After this lesson, students would go on to analyze another Poe story/poem given the tools and knowledge they have gained on how to analyze a story’s setting and characters from this lesson.

11. Instructional Strategies/Learning Tasks to Support Learning
Learning Tasks and Strategies Key teacher questions: ·        What key words or phrases describe the setting of The Fall of the House of Usher? ·        What key words or phrases describe the characters in The Fall of the House of Usher? ·        What similarities can you note between the trailer for Crimson Peak and the story The Fall of the House of Usher in terms of setting and characters? Sequenced Instruction
Teacher’s Role At the beginning of class, the teacher will refer to the learning objective (in student friendly terms) written at the front of the classroom and explain that the students will be doing an activity today. (2 minutes). Before the students start to analyze the short story Usher, the teacher will introduce the trailer for the film Crimson Peak and explain how it relates to Usher in term of Gothicism. The teacher will then show the trailer. (5 minutes) The teacher will then request that the students break up in to pairs or groups of three to begin their analysis of the setting and characters of Usher (and Crimson Peak if they wish). All students are instructed to fill out both bubble sheets with words and phrases that describe the setting of the story/film and the character in the story/film. (7-8 minutes). After the students have filled out both bubble maps, the teacher will then reclaim the students’ attention and create two giant bubble maps at the front of the class for setting and characters and will compose the maps with examples from the groups of the whole class. The teacher will then explain that all of these examples help create the overall genre that is Gothicism and these key words/phrases help create the background of this genre. (5-6 minutes).	Students’ Role Students will have out their copy of the story The Fall of the House of Usher and will listen to the teacher as he/she introduces the lesson for the day and the concept of a bubble map. After the bubble map is introduced to the students, the students are free to ask questions about the lesson and then they will watch the trailer for Crimson Peak, noting similarities between the film and Usher. After the end of the trailer, students are free to pick their partner for the bubble map assignment and are to fill out all bubbles on both maps with key words and phrases that describe the setting and characters of Usher and/or Crimson Peak. Staying in their groups, students are then encouraged to share examples of what they have written in their bubble maps with the whole class in order to create class-wide bubble maps for characters and setting. Students will then take note of how these words/phrases help define the genre of Gothicism.
Student Voice to Gather The bubble maps are great visuals for students to utilize in order to easily organize their thinking in to a clearer manner, as opposed to not writing down and organizing their thoughts. After the lesson is over, students will have the chance to share with the teacher their thoughts on the usefulness of the lesson at either the end of this lesson or at the very beginning of this lesson as a means of review and determination of whether or not the bubble-map method was effective.

12. Differentiated Instruction

Plan This lesson comes pre-differentiated with visual, kinesthetic, and auditory learners all having opportunities to benefit from at least one aspect of this lesson. Visual and auditory learners will benefit from the viewing of the movie trailer and the examples that are shared by their peers at the end of the lesson. Kinesthetic learners benefit form actively thinking of and finding examples to write down in their bubble maps with their partners. Students needing special accommodations can be provided with a transcript of the trailer viewed at the beginning of class and/or more class time to read through Usher in order to find examples to write down in their bubble maps.

13. Resources and Materials

Plan The idea for the lesson came from from here: http://www.ric.edu/astal/litstrategies/mappingstrategies.html. Teacher materials: Physical copy of The Fall of the House of Usher Whiteboard and markers Computer with classroom projector Crimson Peak trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oquZifON8Eg Student materials: Bubble map sheet(s) and pencil Physical copy of The Fall of the House of Usher

14. Management and Safety Issues

Plan In order to manage the classroom, the teacher will state his/her expectations on behavior when doing the group work and viewing the trailer. After the expectations, the teacher will walk around the room, ensuring that all groups are on task and correcting the behavior if it is not found to be the case. The teacher will keep a visual on the students when the trailer is being shown as the lights will be dimmed during the viewing. Students are expected to remain respectful of others while they are sharing their examples with the rest of the class and this will be verbalized to the students by the teacher.

15. Parent & Community Connections

Plan Parents are encouraged through a weekly classroom blog to talk with their students about the classroom activity that we do on this day and possibly come up with more examples of what makes a piece of literature Gothic. The community is involved by means of showing the movie trailer and showing the students that there are other forms of media out in the world that hold certain literature themes other than literature itself.

 The following page contains the two bubble map worksheet, but i could not get them on this post for whatever reason.

Gallagher’s “Readicide”

               The book Readicide by Kelly Gallagher promotes many excellent ways at which teachers can approach attempts to get students to actually like what they are reading. The section I found to be most valuable has to be the part where Gallagher introduces the Los Angeles Unified School District’s unit plan for the novel To Kill a Mockingbird. The unit plan is shockingly comprehensive and long, teaching many different skills from just one novel. Students will spend months on this novel it seems like, and not being too far removed from the role of student myself, I know that by the end of the unit I would never want to pick up To Kill a Mockingbird ever again. I feel that in order to get students to actually enjoy reading and want to read novels on their own outside of the classroom we have to provide for them a variety of works that they can explore. Maybe going even so far as to only teach one important literacy skill or concept per novel that they read. Sure, it would mean having to find many more novels to use in the classroom, but at least the students would not be spending almost half of the school year reading out of the same book over and over again. Granted, there is no roundabout way to avoid having to meet common standards that are set for teachers to get students to achieve. Teachers still have to meet those standards one way or another and learning as many as you can out of one novel seems like the easiest and most cost efficient way to achieve those standards. However, I feel that is doing students a disservice to ease the burden on the teachers end. We need to not take the easy way out and actually motivate students to go out in to the world and read as much as they can by giving those opportunities to learn many different skills and concepts out of just as many pieces of literature.

Tovani’s “I Read it, but I don’t get it”

               Getting students actually interested in what they are reading and knowing why they are reading it is perhaps one of the biggest challenges I can think of as a future teacher (there are probably bigger issues, but for right now this is the extant of my knowledge). Like it says in Chris Tovani’s I Read It, but I Don’t Get It, students will most likely lose interest in actually reading the text they are assigned and will turn to online and other outside sources in order to get a summary of the book/text and find answers for talking points about the text in class, rather than thinking about it themselves. I was guilty of this, and I am positive that my future students will be guilty of this too, even if I do discourage it. But I most likely will not openly discourage going online and getting summaries/themes of texts that I assign in class. Instead, I will create assignments (not necessarily tests) that can only be perfectly completed if the student actually read the text, thus encouraging students to read what they are assigned. Also, making connections of the reading material to outside known information is another good way to generate interest in student reading and learning. For example, by connecting an historical fiction novel to a major war in history that students have already learned about, students will be able to connect and pick out fictional parts of the novel that relate to the actual historical events that they learned in social studies. Finding any way to connect something you are leading the class through to something that they already know (or know of) is an invaluable skill to have and is an easy way to promote student learning and interest. Even if the teacher knows that what they are reading does not connect with anything that the students already know, they can introduce something that the students will surely be interested in first, and then go on to connect the reading to that. There is no shortage of background information to be had.

Social Justice in the Classroom

               When I am teaching my future classroom, I want the concept of respect to be highly valued by every student present in the class. This means that every student is respectful of everyone else, whether it comes in the form of letting one speak till conclusion or staying silent when unkind thoughts enter one’s head. In my classroom, every student is equal and is to be treat with equality. The study “Social Justice in the Classroom” by Jacqueline Grennon Brooks and Eustace G. Thompson summarizes that with respect, students can create a safer and more productive learning environment for themselves. Now I know the old saying “respect is earned, not provided,” but in my class respect is already present and by no means can it be taken away. By coming to and participating in class, students have already earned their respect right out of the gate. Every student in the classroom comes from a different background. In my field experience school I am at right now, there are students that come from all walks of life, but yet they are able to get along just fine and treat each other with equal respect. Now I am not saying that we should ignore our differences and simply pretend that we are all the same, because we are not. In fact, our differences should be utilized and, in a way, celebrated because that is what makes the classroom diverse. Equality in the face of diversity can be a challenging topic, but when everyone has respect for everyone else, equality is possible. Let us use those differences to enrich our learning and gain multiple perspectives on critical thinking topics and issues. A diverse but respectful classroom may possibly be the safest, best learning environment for all students, regardless of their backgrounds or shortcomings. 

Duncan-Andrade and Morrell’s “Critical Pedagogy and Popular Culture in an Urban Secondary English Classroom”

               Well now I know why the TPA lesson format stresses to us that we should connect our lessons in a way to our students’ cultural and communal background. In order to get students interested in doing research projects and to gather background information on their culture, the researchers let some students choose what they wanted to do and about four of them were interested in doing a project/study on hip-hop. Hip-hop, I feel, can be a great representation of urban backgrounds and cultures, so long as they choose the right artists to study and no just talk about trap music or whips. Artists like Vince Staples, Kendrick Lamar, Biggie, will all give you great insights to their personal lives and all talk about how they grew up in maybe similar cases to the students chosen for the study. All of this leads back to classroom management and holding the students interests or sparking interest in them; creating motivation. I also agree with their conclusion that students (and everyone, for that matter) should critically think about and analyze the news that the mainstream media provides for us. More than once have I came across a major story (that was confirmed) on a website or cable channel that seemed to be ignored on the main media channels, and conversely media channels seem to run stories every now and then that either are non-news or are, in rare cases, completely made up in order to boost ratings. Students do need to be listened rather than talked at. By letting them tell us what they want to learn, we can pick out what we need to teach them and how to go around teaching it. Students need to be ready for the 21^st century and all that it brings in media and education, so teachers must be one step ahead of them, preparing them for this task.

Pedagogy of the Oppressed

        The likening of passive students to being oppressed was kind of a shock to get past when first reading this article, but the more I read the article and the more I thought about it, educators who simply rely on narration of information to students really is making them oppressed. Pure narration is keeping the students from getting the education that they deserve, including critical thinking. Filling up students like trash cans with the “garbage” that is simply facts and gospel from the narrating educator is a way of saying that banking education (providing an education that simply consists of memorizing and absorbing information) is a very ineffective way of teaching students. For example, as I am writing this I am sitting in one of the history classes I need for my minor, an entry level class, and the professor (if he is a professor, I forget and do not care to look at the syllabus right now) is doing nothing but reading history facts and dates off of a power point at the front of the class. It is not like this class is even that big; there are maybe 25 students enrolled in the class. What does me reading this article and writing this post during the middle of this class say about the effectiveness of simple narration as a means of educating? I am not engaged at all with the class, an even if I was taking notes on all of the slides he is reading off of and then going off on tangents on, I still would not be learning anything. I wanted to learn about this point and place in history and learn what the mindset was between the nations and leaders/peoples of the era, but instead I am learning dates and names and locations with no end to this trend in sight. Oh well, at least the teacher posts his power points online.