324 Lesson 3

    During the lesson, we started with a “This or That” Halloween activity. Halloween is my favorite holiday, so it was fun to talk about what we like and do not like, and to share what our costumes were. One of our students was absent, so it was just Student G with us today.

                                                    

    After that, we reviewed our class norms, went over the agenda, and then jumped right into our QAR (Question-Answer Relationship) strategy anchor chart. I explained what an informational text was and how the QAR strategy connected to the book we were reading. 

    When I was done, my partner shared the vocabulary words, which led to some good questions about Congress and politics. Our book was about Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman in Congress, so some of the vocabulary was more advanced and political. 

    We had prepared a short slideshow explaining what Congress is, the two houses, and which one Shirley was in. We also explained why voting is important and how people are elected into Congress. Our student shared that this connected to things she was learning about in her classroom, so she had some background knowledge, but she also learned new information from the slideshow. She was very interested in the political aspect of the story and made several comments about how Shirley was “sassy” and “a leader.” Because Student G was born in another country and is a student of color, I think seeing Shirley Chisholm’s story was empowering for her.

    The book was a little long and had a lot of information about Shirley’s life, but Student G stayed engaged the whole time. She read a few pages out loud and made thoughtful comments as we went. Since she was the only student there, having her read and share ideas kept her involved and focused.

    After reading, we worked on our QAR strategy. There were two text-based questions for her to answer. My partner wrote sentence starters on the whiteboard to help her begin her answers. Student G was able to complete the activity on her own and enjoyed looking through the text to find evidence for her answers. She even came up with a clever new title for the book, which was part of the questions.

    Next, we took a brain break and worked on putting together her reading journal. She really enjoyed seeing all her work in one place and was proud of how much she had accomplished. This helped her stay motivated to keep adding more pages each week. Next time, our other student will make his cover and add his pages too.

    After our break, we moved on to the “On Your Own” question, which is part of the QAR strategy. Since this book already required a lot of writing, we decided to make this question more of a research activity. The task was to find another person of color who achieved a political first and write down two accomplishments from their career.

    We had some trouble at first with the Chromebook, so my partner worked on fixing that while I used my computer with a student-friendly search engine called Kiddle. We preferred Epic, and once the Chromebook was fixed, we both used that site. Student G was excited to get started and chose from a few names she already knew—Martin Luther King Jr., Kamala Harris, and Barack Obama. She first chose Martin Luther King Jr., but after we talked, she decided to learn about Kamala Harris instead, since she already knew a lot about Dr. King.

    Since we didn’t have a second student today, I joined in and researched Barack Obama so we could still compare two people as planned. Student G used Epic to find information with my partner, while I used my own computer. Once we finished the research, we each drew a picture of our person, which she really enjoyed.

                                                

    When we shared out, she noticed that both Obama and Harris had similar timelines in their political careers and made strong connections between the two. She did a great job writing her answers in complete sentences and explaining the two accomplishments Harris has made in her career.  

    The objectives were met because our student was able to fully complete the QAR worksheet on her own. She even exceeded our expectations by staying focused and engaged throughout the lesson, even though she was the only student present. She volunteered to read parts of the book out loud and showed great understanding of the text. Our student also did a great job using the Epic website to research and confidently presented her work at the end of the lesson.

    What was learned from this experience was that our student really enjoyed learning about politics and making connections between what she already knew from her classroom and what we were teaching in our lesson. She especially liked the slideshow at the beginning and, as always, enjoyed reading the vocabulary words and the book with us. She stayed very engaged throughout the lesson and seemed excited to use her computer for the research project instead of just doing paper and pencil work.

    This experience will influence my professional identity by reminding me how important it is to connect lessons to students’ real-world knowledge and interests. I learned that when students can relate what they are learning to their own lives or things they already know, they stay more engaged and excited to participate.