As educators, it is important to make students feel valued and respected. Lesson planning should consider the specific needs, assets, and experiences of your students. Taking into consideration students’ cultures, languages, and life experiences will allow educators to plan culturally responsive, standards-based ELA instruction that supports individual students’ needs and builds a positive classroom culture.
Part 1: Diverse ELA Lesson Plan
You are in your first year of teaching and finding that many of your students come from different cultures with different ethnic and linguistic backgrounds. You have been providing direct instruction and students are not performing as well on assessments as you would like. You have also heard a few students talking about how they are struggling to understand the lesson after your instruction and that they were confused by the examples you provided.
Considering the various needs of the learners in your classroom and what strategies might be most applicable to support the standards you are teaching is an important part of planning. Use the “COE Lesson Plan Template” and “ELM-580 Class Profile” to complete this assignment. Select a grade level and two ELA standards (one reading and one writing) from the state you plan to teach in to develop a lesson plan that is culturally responsive and differentiated to meet the various needs of students in the “ELM-580 Class Profile.” Include the following in your lesson plan: Grade level 2, State Tennessee
- Culturally responsive instructional strategies and materials that engage, motivate, and meet the diverse and specific needs of the students
- Culturally responsive and differentiated practices that meet the learning needs of the students
Part 2: Justification of Culturally Responsive Teaching
Write a 500 word rationale explaining the instructional decisions you made throughout the planning of your lesson in Part 1. Include the following in your rationale:
- Explain how a student’s culture and cultural beliefs can affect their learning. Justify how the instructional strategies and materials are culturally responsive and how they are used in the lesson to motivate, engage, and meet the diverse and specific needs of students.
- Discuss how you adapted/differentiated your plan to deliver standards-based instruction and assessment that is culturally responsive and fits the learning needs of all the students, including students with diverse cultural backgrounds, English language learners, and students with exceptionalities.
- Describe an activity for the next day’s lesson that would integrate listening and speaking and review the learning objective for this lesson.