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I really enjoyed the zoom lesson this week. The 99.9% activity worked very well over zoom, and it demonstrated the concept of antibiotic resistant bacteria very well. My biggest takeaway from the lesson was that teaching students academic language through a hands on activity like this while using it is a way more effective way to learn. I learned to use the vocabulary frequently in the lesson when the skittles and marshmallows were only called normal bacteria and mutated bacteria for the whole lesson. Students are much more likely to retain the information with a learning experience like this attached to it. It's a far more memorable way to learn than just writing down definitions. As a student, I wasn't just learning the academic vocabulary of the lesson (bacteria, mutation, antibiotic), but I was learning the concepts and how these words connect. It was much more higher order thinking.

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This zoom session really helped me understand academic language and clear up some things. I was having a really hard problem with syntax and trying to find something to put in that box. It makes sense now why in some lessons we don’t have to use syntax. I also liked how in the zoom meeting while learning the academic language it wasn’t shoved at us it was brought up like we were having a conversation or bringing it up by talking about things we already knew about. I also like how holly mentioned that we don’t have to teach all the vocabulary if we don’t really need it to complete the lesson. Completing the lesson I think it truly helps us understand why teaching this way is beneficial. Just like teaching students, it shows us and helps us remember these lessons instead of just listening to a lecture or reading a textbook. I was truly amazed at the end of the lesson how many things we hit on the DOK levels. I believe holly said we hit at least 20 just on one level. It just shows how more engaging these types of lessons truly are.

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3/20 Zoom Meeting Reflection- Star Ortega

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3/20 Zoom Meeting Reflection- Star Ortega

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I enjoyed the 99.99% Activity because you really made us think like both teachers and students. I like how even though they were really marshmallows, hand sanitizer, toothpick, skittles, you really enforced it for us to use the "academic language" like a student would. You moved along the Cognitive Rigor Matrix to ensure that we understood the lesson. You also repeated the academic language often so we could learn from repetition and context just like students would learn. You also gave a relevant real world example of the lesson and that helped me not only remember it, but also make a connection with it because I was obsessed with hand sanitizer when COVID first started, not knowing the effects of it later on. The students will be able to understand a lesson better if they are able to make a connection with it.

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I thought that the Zoom meeting was very informative. Here are 3 things that I noticed:

1. I liked how at the beginning, we discussed syntax and discourse. This is where I struggled in the assignment and now I'm glad to go back to the assignment to edit.

2. For me, this lesson was SUPER engaging. I can only imagine what a lesson like this would be for a middle school student. This is the perfect lesson to show academic language.

3. One thing I struggled with was learning to NOT pre-teach academic language. This was new as I was taught this way and see students still being taught this way. But I also see that if we don't preteach the vocabulary, it gives students the opportunity to use critical thinking skills and is more authentic way of teaching.

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I really enjoyed this week's zoom and how the activity was made interactive so that we can see what happens during the experiment and so we can know what a teacher should be thinking about behind the scenes. I realized that in order for disciplinary literacy to be a possibility, a teacher must guide them in that direction one step at a time. Once the core understanding exists, it helps students become interested and use their knowledge inside and outside the classroom.
It fits in with content rigor because the content and understanding got more specific and direct than when a student began. The building blocks of knowledge were established and gave students a greater chance of understanding what they are learning and being inside the experience.
When academic language is understood and used correctly by a teacher it leads to the death of knowledge being present and it leads to academic language vocabulary or terms being better remembered than if they learned them by themselves.

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I thought that this weeks zoom and activity was honestly awesome. First off, I think everyone should do the 99.99% activity at some point in their academic career because its such an important topic. Its something that we see everyday but don't understand it very well. This activity does a great a of explaining mutations and how cells work and things like that. It also gives us insight to how the world works and the various diseases that are out there. Its just a great lesson to be apart of. But the back bone of the lesson was to show how academic language is used in the classroom and I learned a lot about that during this activity too.

The biggest take away I had from the lesson about academic language is that it doesn't have to be right in your face with academic language, if done correctly it can be done subtly without the students even knowing it. You are teaching your students to use academic language just by doing the activity. You don't necessarily need worksheets or vocab cards or things like that to get them to learn the material. Although those are great tools to use, its not totally necessary. We talked a lot about this when we were going over the materials, the skittle weren't skittles anymore they were the mutated bacteria, and the marsh mellows weren't marsh mellows they were the original bacteria. Just by calling them by the scientific names and what they represent can help the students learn how to use those words and what they mean. Students can use the words as they are physically interacting with the concepts and that's something that I really like and that's how I learn the best. It has to be hand-on for me to truly understand it. That directly correlates to Disciplinary literacy, actually using the terms and doing the things that scientists would do. We are put into the shoes of someone in this discipline, and we have to use their terminology. We have to use the words mutation, bacteria, replication, etc. because that's what a scientist would say and do.

When you talk about the Cognitive Rigor Matrix, the more we moved along in the activity the more we had to think or apply this same concept to other things. We started off with the basics understanding what each part is and how they work and then we built up to more complex ideas like applying to real life. We talked about Cancer and Covid and other things like that which effect our everyday lives. I think that's such an important part to this lesson is that very idea of applying and drawing conclusions to our own lives and our own personal experiences.

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This weeks zoom session was a great experience. It was nice to be face to face and learn in that manner. I also found our 99.99% lesson to be very educational. My initial reaction is that I learned so many valuable lessons during this zoom call. One of the major takeaways that I took from this class was that academic language needs to be natural. Nothing was forced and it felt more real and authentic. It was great to see you model the naturalness of academic language. I also learned that while teaching a lesson we as teachers should focus on the big picture including the targets and standards. I liked how you stayed away from using complicated or complex words when they were not needed. Also, you made sure to mention the most important words over and over again so we could become comfortable with them throughout the lesson. Also, you brought the big picture ideas up at the end of the lesson. For example, you connected this lesson to personal experiences, covid-19, and our daily lives and how this lesson can impact it. I felt that meeting in person, and going through the lesson as a group made this lesson way more memorable. I think I might always look at skittles and marshmallows differently after you really got the points across to us that they were different strands of bacteria. Another main point was instead of just handing out a chart to us online, you made us handwrite the chart. Even after a few days later I can still visualize the activity we were doing vividly. This lesson fit the cognitive rigor matrix because we started off with basic knowledge answers and developed into much more complex and meaningful ideas as the lesson went on. This is important because we could not have had those complex and deep discussions, without the basic foundation of the lesson. This lesson connected to DL because we were playing the role of scientists. We had to think and use skills that scientists use in order to complete their work. It connected to CAL because we still use a general foundation and basic learning skills to complete the lesson. It was nice to see how these two will always go hand in hand. Overall, I learned a lot at this meeting and was glad that I came and participated.

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I felt the Zoom session was really helpful in demonstrating for us why using an activity, experiment or play in the classroom for students is important not only for learning about the subject but also to help them learn the academic and disciplinary language.  These hands on experiences and demonstrations are more memorable than reading aloud in a textbook together, reading on one's own, or just listening to a lecture.  It is also more memorable and a better way to learn the vocabulary than writing and reading vocabulary cards and trying to memorize definitions.  We got to experience what our students would be experiencing in the class and I really like when instructors use this method to teach us because we can connect to the impact that these teaching styles and choices can have on the student.  The visual demonstration in the activity and on the scatter graph of how the normal bacteria was almost immediately killed off and the fast rise of the mutated bacteria really made successfully made the point.   The discussion also allowed the instructor to naturally build upon the language that the students have learned up to that point and begin introducing new set of vocabulary such as resistant and variants without making it feel like it was forced or just a new group of terms to learn.  I also felt having students write down the items for the chart and fill in the answers not only kept students engaged but also utilized the fact that writing things down often helps with learning and memory, and it is especially helpful to write down new vocabulary like while you are listening to the word within context.  Additionally, I liked the way it was pointed out how not all new vocabulary needed to be emphasized unless it was important for the student to be able to understand the lesson. For example, the teacher used the term scatter graph and showed one, briefly explaining what it is, but didn't need to emphasize was it was again at the end for this particular lesson, as it was not a vital term for this lesson.  It helped me to further understand the point that not all new vocabulary needs to be emphasized and that it depends on each word's importance and relevance to understanding the lesson.

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The Zoom session was very educational and impactful. I was able to get some clarifications on AL but I think I still need to see more examples of seeing discourse and syntax in lessons. Otherwise, the AL Q's & A's answered some questions I didn't know I had and the conversation we had over it made me understand AL more. I really enjoyed the 99.99% lesson and hope to use it in my future classroom. I liked the real life connection behind the lesson and the conversations that might come from the lesson just like the one we had Monday night. Seeing the lesson play out was what was most impactful. I have always been someone who can't learning with just reading or hearing, I need to be able to do the task/experiment to really understand. The lesson fit with DL because it allows the students to think like a scientist with recording data, graphing data, coming up with conclusions based on the data, etc. The lesson also played into multiple levels of DOK and exposes students to all the different components in those levels.

For Academic Language, I learned one very important thing, the importance of using AL in the lesson and using repetition of the language to help students understand it more. I know in my schooling, we would do the flashcards and memorization games but then I would forget everything next lesson. Learning language in the context of the lesson has always helped me more than sitting and memorizing. I also learned that authenticity is key.

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99.99% Activity Zoom Reflection-Adriana Zuniga

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99.99% Activity Zoom Reflection-Adriana Zuniga

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I thought the Monday Zoom activity was engaging and the discussion brought various aspects of academic language into perspective. One of the key takeaways was that vocabulary does not need to be reviewed before the start of a lesson. I guess it was engrained in my brain and from my past educational experiences that we always review essential vocabulary terms, define them, and, in some cases, memorize them. Reflecting back, this does not entirely make sense, students are much more engaged and interact with the text more when they are tasked with using context clues or breaking down difficult words. Furthermore, incorporating verbal repetition and having students use sources where they see the academic language being used in videos or supplementary texts, aids in the learning process as well.
As for the actual activity we did on zoom, I found it very helpful to participate, make the graph, watch the quantity of skittles (bacteria) continue to grow, and review how the DOK levels were applied throughout the lesson.

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The 99.99% activity on zoom was very eye opening. I learned a lot about using and teaching academic language. I also liked going over the matrix to help pinpoint the DOK levels that were incorporated. The last eye opening experience was discussing the bigger picture and how this experiment relates to the real world.
The activity showed me that pre-teaching vocab is actually not the right way to teach student academic language. Addresses the language and repeating it during the lesson helps the student learn it because instead of just knowing the definition of the word and having to memorize it the lesson taught me that they'll learn through discourse and syntax. This means that students participate in the discipline by knowing how to use the words and use terms related to the discipline For example, in the activity we focused on using the words mutation, bacteria, selective pressure, etc. which are words specific to the discipline.
Furthermore, I took several lessons from the activity. The first is that kids will not learn by just reading something. I say this because I read the activity, but I did not fully learn anything or fully understand it until I participated in it. As a history teacher what this means for me is that lessons must go beyond reading content. Students will better understand when they have authentic classroom experiences with the subject. The next lesson I took from it was that when students are interested in the topic they will talk about it, also known as discourse. This means that students will use academic language and participate it in it. - Daniela Robles

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The Zoom on Sunday was very beneficial. I find it easier learning the content when I am able to see and experience it first hand. The 99.99% lesson really did having us think like scientists, an example of what a disciplinary literacy lesson could look like. I was still unsure of how to introduce AL. It all came naturally throughout the lesson, not giving explicit definitions. The words were then continuously repeated throughout the whole lesson.
After looking at the cognitive rigger matrix, most if not all were touched on. To start the lesson, we went over what the skittles, marshmallows, and tooth pick represented. We were no longer able to call them that they were now mutated bacteria, normal bacteria, and the dose/hand sanitizer. By doing this students understood what was happening rather than just picking up marshmallows. The students were able to make connections and then have discussions afterward about why hand sanitizer is bad if we keep using it. This allowed everyone to be fully engaged and dig deeper on what we were learning.

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I felt that I learned quite a lot during the Zoom. Like I said during the meeting, I did feel a little uncomfortable with the idea of not providing the students with a list of academic vocabulary before a new unit or lesson. I had thought that if they had been provided with a list of essential vocabulary, they would be less likely to miss it during activities or readings. What I’ve learned from the zoom is that it is more important to give them not only the word in context, but in a repeated fashion. Constantly repeating the word in context and having them complete activities in which these words are used will be able to better understand and apply the vocabulary. This is much better then if they are simply given a list, as they will only be attempting to remember the list and not what the words truly mean.

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The zoom on Monday night was one of the best zoom classes I have ever attended. I always feel like it is so hard to stay engaged on zoom, but this particular zoom and the activity we did was very interesting and I feel like I learned so much. We really focused on the importance of academic language and how it needs to be addressed throughout a lesson in order for it to be authentic. One of my main takeaways regarding AL was that you do not want to be pre-teaching it to students. Looking back and thinking about it more, I definitely had many classes where teachers gave us a list of vocab words before we read a chapter in the text or before they taught a lesson. I understand now that that makes the lesson inauthentic because it is less natural and the words are not being taught in the context of the lesson. The 99.99% activity was very insightful into how we want to teach within disciplinary literacy and incorporating content area literacy strategies. This activity has students creating a graph, running an experiment, and collecting data like a scientist would while conducting an experiment. We also learned the importance of repetition. Students need to truly understand the extent of the problem, so repeating the experiment may help the data really stick with them. At the end of the zoom, we discussed how this activity fit into the DOK levels and Cognitive Rigor Matrix. It is so cool to see how many levels this fit into, because if a teacher really teaches an authentic lesson, it should incorporate every DOK level.

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Zoom Session & Activity Reflection - CJ Ponton

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Zoom Session & Activity Reflection - CJ Ponton

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Looking back at last night's Zoom session, I think it was the most beneficial & influential session up to this point in the course. My reasoning for this definitely begins with discussing the "hows & whys" of Academic Language. Right from the beginning of the session, Professor Bontkowski did a fantastic job in breaking down the differences between syntax, discourse & function (something that I was having trouble differentiating between). This breakdown of each really helped when we began the 99.99% lesson, being that I was able to conceptualize the importance of how discourse & syntax played into utilizing vocabulary throughout the lesson. As for the actual application of the lesson, one very important concept that stood out was when Professor Bontkowski talked about the "visual application" of showing the experiment in full, rather than just reading about it. Even as college students working toward their master's, it was still much more easily comprehendible to watch the lesson in action, rather than abstractly conceptualizing. With this, I also appreciated Professor Bontkowski's willingness to reflect upon the uses of discourse & syntax throughout the lesson, whether charting/graphing results or constantly using the correct vocab, rather than calling the bacteria "Skittles" & "Marshmallows". As for DOK & the Cognitive Rigor Matrix, it was pointed out following the lesson that different levels of knowledge & complexity existed within this experiment, which is something that teachers should strive for when teaching various lessons. I also believe that in relation to DL & CAL, basic strategies were used to build upon the lesson's vocabulary, but it felt authentic & participatory, helping to build upon the disciplinary literacy.

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This Zoom and the activity we did during it really highlighted the importance of Academic Language and active participation to construct that AL.  When I was reading the lesson, I could understand it, but I don’t think I understood the full impact of the lesson.  When I saw the lesson and was engaged in talking about the experiment, everything became so much more real.  In order for learning to happen, students need to be fully immersed in the lesson and the activity.  When students are actively using the academic language, they are constructing meaning.  As teachers, it is important for us to model and create an environment where academic language has a place and is practiced.  We were implementing Disciplinary Literacy, practicing science in real authentic experiences and talking about what the experiment means for the real world.  This is why DL lessons should be centered around DOK 3 and 4.  I had a thought for how CAL could be used in this lesson, but I am not sure how effective it would be.  When reading the supplemental articles, I was thinking the article could be broken down into chunks, and each group of students could work to decipher their chunk.  After they decode their chunk, the class will come together to talk about the article as a whole.  The students will have to make connections between their parts of the article and piece it together to make sense of the whole article.  My hesitation with this is I fear the article would be too challenging to decode without context.  Context is so important for Academic Language to be learned, and if the students are trying to read only a part of the article, it will probably be challenging to make sense of the Academic Language in the article.  These past few weeks have definitely challenged me when it comes to Academic Language, but I am gaining a much better and deeper understanding of it and how to implement it.

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The sunday night zoom lesson was very helpful to observe for several reasons. Looking through the cognitive rigor matrix I believe all the depths of knowledge levels were touched on. We were continously recalling what each piece of the activity stood for ( Skittles-mutated, Marshmallows-Normal, Toothpick-hand sanitizer). We were able to understand the skills that were involved in the activity and recognize the procedures needed to complete the activity. We worked in the higher levels as we began to recognize what was going on as we went through each dose. We noticed that the mutated bacteria kept multiplying and getting stronger. The recognition allowed us to make deeper connections about ideas such as cancer, covid, and sicknesses in general. I love that I was able to see this lesson in action rather than just reading through it. I was able to put myself in my students shoes and I was truly engaged throughout the lesson. In relation to academic language I now know that it is best to find activities that keep the students interested and encourage inquiry/exploration based learning. I know that it is important to let the students explore and almost come up with their own definition through exploration and inquiry before sharing the word that goes along with the concept. We do all of this because this is the proper way to ensure that students are UNDERSTANDING rather than just drill and practices. It is one thing for a student to memorize but overall understanding is where the true learning stems from. Overall, I am really glad I participated in the zoom and was able to see this lesson in action. And as I mentioned this lesson helped me understand rather than just memorize what academic language is.

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I thought the lesson that we did tonight on Zoom was a fantastic example of how Disciplinary Literacy works in the classroom. We were not calling them skittles we were calling them mutated bacteria. The lesson was great at immersing the students in Academic Language and the words were used repeatedly.  This is how students learn the meaning of the words and how they should be applied. I also enjoyed the part where we looked at the recommended articles in the lesson. If we would have had the students read those articles before the experiment they would have been very difficult to comprehend. However, in having the students do first and hear the terminology of the lesson and then going back and reading the articles it is just reinforcing the terms that they learned again through repetition. This was much like the exercise we did when we read the book The Arrival and then went back and learned about Ellis Island. It made the story all the more clear and we were able to see that this is something that really happened. I also thought that the lesson did a fantastic job of moving through all the different levels in the Cognitive Rigor Matrix. There were multiple things that I was able to pick out from each column. I thought overall it was a great lesson and helped the students (me) to visualize what happens to the bacteria that is not killed by hand sanitizer and had great real world connections that could be extrapolated from it.

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Thoughts on Zoom and 99.9% Activity-Mike Reif

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Thoughts on Zoom and 99.9% Activity-Mike Reif

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Something that I took out of tonight's lesson was the importance of centering a lesson around students. Simplifying the language used in a lesson and using examples that are clear and easy for students to understand. More often than not simplifying language and lessons can greatly help students complete their assignments and learn.

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I think the biggest take away that I had was how sometimes or a majority of the time we need to really get our students to see the big picture. It is important that we spend the time to make sure students are getting the proper background information regarding everything they will be doing, yet doing so as part of a lesson or two instead of just throwing a list of things they need to know at them. I also felt I understood how to use and teach Academic Language a little better.