Hayley CunninghamWOK Humanities- LAP 5

“Going Home” by Eve Bunting

I. Content : Describe what it is you will teach. What is the content?

Students will be extending their concept of home to include family roots and ancestry. They will listen to a read-aloud of Going Home by Eve Bunting and be asked to think about if one can feel at home in two places. Students will have the opportunity to think about their ancestry and create an I Am From poem.

II. Learning Goal(s) : Describe what specifically students will know and be able to do after the experience of this class.

Students will continue to add ancestry to their perception of home. Students will be able to recognize that home can also be tied to cultural roots. Students will be able to link their study on home to our history study of immigration.

III. Rationale : Explain how the content and learning goal(s) relate to your Curriculum Unit Plan learning goals.

This lesson is the final step in our home study. Students have reflected on home as a physical space, home having an emotional connection- where ones family is, and home as a place in the community. Students will open their concept to include home as having cultural roots. This lesson comes perfectly in our sequence, as students will be asked to find out their family immigrant stories for their history unit. This will give students dual opportunities to reflect on their own roots in regards to their perception of home.

IV. Assessment : Describe how you and your students will know they have reached your learning goals.

Students will be informally assessed in their ability to engage in turn and talks and exert self-control during the read-aloud. My students as well as I will know that they have reached my learning goals if they are able to reflect on their familial roots and to create an I Am From poem.

V. Personalization and equity : Describe how you will provide for individual student strengths and needs. How will you and your lesson consider the needs of each student and scaffold learning? How specifically will ELL students and students with learning disabilities gain access and be supported?

When writing their poems, ELL students will be given a sheet with an outline for their

poem. It will come in the form of mad libs in order to scaffold students into their thinking. It will help foster an environment with a low affective filter to give students the confidence to participate in the content. Additionally, ELL students will be supported in their development of oral skills by being given the opportunity to read their poems.

Furthermore, students will be engaged in creating gist statements throughout the book to monitor their understanding of the story. This will help all learners stay on track and give

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Hayley CunninghamWOK Humanities- LAP 5

“Going Home” by Eve Buntingstudents with higher academic achievement the opportunity to reflect and further build their knowledge.

VI. Activity description and agenda a. Describe the activities that will help your students understand the content of your

class lesson by creating an agenda with time frames for your class. Be prepared to explain why you think each activity will help students on the path toward understanding.

Time Teacher Activity Student Activity Materials Needed1-5 Minutes Facilitate Discussion:

Looking at the title of this book, Going Home, what do you predict the book is going to be about?

Turn & Talk with a partner

Going Home

5-25 Minutes Interactive read-aloud:-Stop every couple of pages and create a verbal gist statement to monitor student understanding of the story.

Facilitate Discussion:Do you think that home can be two places? Why or Why not?

Probe students to thinking about how this book connects to our immigration studies.

Listen respectfully to the story.

Turn & Talk

Going Home

25-45 Minutes Introduce Where I am From poems by showing a model of a poem from the character Carlos’ perspective.

Explain activity:Students will write their own Where I am

Writing:Where I am From poem.

Model Poem

Handout with sentence stems

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Hayley CunninghamWOK Humanities- LAP 5

“Going Home” by Eve BuntingFrom poems.

45-60 Minutes Facilitate Sharing Circle

Share poems in a sharing circle on the rug.

Where I am From poems.

b. What particular challenges, in terms of student learning or implementing planned activity, do you anticipate and how will you address them?

I anticipate students having challenges with writing their poems. In order to combat this, I will probe them with questions to help facilitate their thinking. I will also provide them with a model of expectations. Furthermore, students will have sentence stems to help get them started.

VII. List the Massachusetts Learning Standards this lesson addresses.

SL.4.1 Engage effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in groups, and teacher-led) with diverse partners on grade 4 topics and texts, building on others’ ideas and expressing their own clearly.

SL.4.4 Report on a topic or text, tell a story, or recount an experience in an organized manner, using appropriate fact and relevant, descriptive details to support main ideas or themes; speak clearly at an understandable pace.

VIII. Reflection

a. In light of all areas of planning, but especially in terms of your stated purpose and learning goals, in what ways was the activity successful? How do you know? In what ways was it not successful? How might the activity be planned differently another time?

This lesson didn’t go 100% as planned. I didn’t have the time I needed to show the I Am From poem from Carlos’ perspective (see Appendix for poem). I only got to show the poem from my perspective (see Appendix). I think seeing a poem from Carlos’ perspective would have been nice way for them to connect to the book on a deeper level. If I were to implement this lesson again, I think I would try to have the class come up with a poem from Carlos’ perspective as a whole class using my template. But, I think that the class enjoyed hearing my poem. They were very interested to hear that my family is from Italy. They ask tons of questions about my life everyday so I felt that this was a nice way to share a piece of me with them. It definitely benefited them in terms of community building and teacher-student rapport.

Additionally, we didn’t get to share our poems because most students didn’t even have enough time to finish their poems. They will hopefully be given time to finish them as they were all so excited to do it. I think they’ll enjoy sharing them as well. They are all very passionate about their cultures and like to share tidbits of information on a daily basis.

There were many things about this lesson that I would change. For one, I would have better prepared them for the poem. Many students had questions on what was a tradition. Some students also had trouble conceptualizing what culture meant and what we’re you’re family is

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Hayley CunninghamWOK Humanities- LAP 5

“Going Home” by Eve Buntingfrom meant. They talked about how they are from Vermont in their I Am From poem, which missed the cultural connection my lesson was supposed to draw on.

If I were to do this again, we would go over specific vocabulary related to culture (such as tradition, roots, ancestor and so forth) prior to the lesson and put it into context. I also hadn’t realized until after the lesson that I was using the term roots frequently. Roots is a polysemous word having two meanings. I’m sure I confused my ELL students and even some of my non-ELL students by throwing around a term that they think to be related to a tree. So again, I would definitely have a mini-vocabulary lesson to take away some of the confusion we experienced.

Another change I would make is that I would have made a list of the countries our class represents the day before. I would then have printed color copies of each students flag to hand out. It was hectic trying to find the colors of everyone’s flag in such a short amount of time.

In the end, there were some successful aspects of my lesson such as that students were enthusiastic to write about their cultures. Another successful aspect was the read-aloud. Students loved the book and were able to make connections to our immigration unit. They were able to create gist statements along the way. Also, many students recognized that home can be in two places, where you’re home is now and where your family is from. Some students still need help understanding this concept, but it is something that we can come back to in our history unit.

Furthermore, for the students who completed their poems, they were successful. For one, Alkwathar, student sample 1, who is from Saudia Arabia and is passionate about her Muslim culture accurately depicted it by citing things from her culture such as women covering their bodies, celebrating Ramadan, and living in the dessert. Dashaun, student sample 2, is from Jamaica. He talked about parades, such as Baccahanal being big in his country and that Jamaica is an Island. Finally, Johannis, student sample 3, is one of our unmotivated students who rarely completes her work is from Dominican Republic. Johannis wrote a list of foods from her culture in Spanish! Students took the time to reflect on their culture and walking around asking students questions, they seemed to understand their culture as being a part of their perception of home. Overall, the poems from these students were really impressive and show the diverse culture that exists in our classroom. Having this in place will allow students to reflect on their perception of both home and familial immigrant stories.

b. What did you learn from the experience of this lesson that will inform your next LAP?

From this lesson, I assumed the students had prior knowledge of culture and ancestry. I assumed they knew what country their families were from. I learned that I cannot make these assumptions and need to explicitly teach the vocabulary and big idea words for any future lessons lesson. Any future lessons that I do will definitely take this into account.

I also learned that scaffolding my students into the writing with sentence stems was definitely beneficial. If I were to give them a blank sheet, I would not have produced any results. I would have spent the majority of the lesson trying to explain my expectations. I gave them the expectation and it worked well, despite the vocabulary flaw.

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Hayley CunninghamWOK Humanities- LAP 5

“Going Home” by Eve Bunting

Appendix

I Am From Poem Models:

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Hayley CunninghamWOK Humanities- LAP 5

“Going Home” by Eve Bunting

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“Going Home” by Eve BuntingStudent Sample 1:

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Hayley CunninghamWOK Humanities- LAP 5

“Going Home” by Eve Bunting

Student Sample 2:

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Hayley CunninghamWOK Humanities- LAP 5

“Going Home” by Eve BuntingStudent Sample 3:

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