Jen Kaufman takes on B Sampler Week 1, Lesson 3!

We returned for a 3rd time to Monique Armstrong's 4th/5th grade classroom--such a great group of students and a really positive classroom environment. This time the luminous Jennifer Kaufman, fellow Bilingual and English Learner Specialist and former Think College Now TSA took a crack at it.

Video link for week 1, lesson 3
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Jennifer added a brief but important little bit of information on Jacob Lawrence to put the piece of art in context. One nice thing about this program for OUSD is that it is very multi-cultural, and I think Jen's addition leveraged that, particularly given that we are coming to the end of black history month and Lawrence was a key figure in the Harlem Renaissance.

Jen kept up the all-hands-on-deck-SDAIE/CLAD-tool -bag approach going. She also introduced some new ways of repeating the key sentences. And she added a Discussion Worthy Prompt (read all about it by clicking on the highlighted text) at the end: Why do you think the author painted this picture? I think this was engaging for the students, and I liked the way it was tied to the vocabulary that had been developed in the lesson, giving students a chance to practice their vocabulary at the same time they were elaborating their thoughts. This practice of making sure students have a chance to apply their vocabulary in a discussion-worthy prompt is one that we want to continue.

Other take aways:

• The students at lower CELDT levels seemed to be pushed just about the right amount and seemed pretty fearless about expressing themselves
• There was some nice support and coaching of ELLs by native English speaking peers
• Engagement remained pretty high, though I noted some late-in-the week afternoon tiredness in some of the students
• We considered leaving out a section because the questions seemed a little thin, but then we realized that we would be dropping the important vocabulary that is developed (the word "prepared") so she left it in
• Monique and Jen and I figured out how to rig up a standard PC computer to a projector so that Monique could do the program even though she doesn't have a laptop--let me know if you might want help with this. Basically, the projector becomes the monitor for the PC computer.

Cheers!

--Mike Ray

Bilingual and English Learner Specialist

ELL Office

Leadership, Curriculum and Instruction

OUSD