Guided Practice: Since this is the first time using this form students are shown how to fill in the boxes through teacher demonstration.

Success:

Students have all the key vocabulary in one location to make it easier for them to review and it helps them organize their thoughts and understanding of the terms.

Challenges:

The students do not always understand what they need to write or draw and require detailed modeling or examples for them to refer to in understanding how to complete the graphic organizer.

Success: Students were provided with the definition first and then made deeper connections through the examples and characteristics sections. I like this organizer strategy for vocabulary because it can transfer to any subject or assignment and it allows student to build upon their background knowledge.

Enhanced section "what is it like" and "what are examples" by describing these sections as "characteristics" and "similarities" (two important academic vocab. words)

Challenge - students had trouble coming up with their own examples. Most could only define this word as an extraterrestrial.

Successes:

Challenges:

Success:

Students have a word bank at the bottom to look up their definitions.

Challenge:

This is new vocabulary so students were not able to include examples on their own.

Success: Students have a word bank to understand the meaning of each word in their music. They also can see a visual representation of what they need to perform.

Challenge: Students will need to understand how to control air on their instrument to produce a good sound while producing their written dynamics.

Success: Students did a good job putting it in their own words or simplifying it.

Challenge:

Getting them to give better effort in their sentences.

Success- students can take these words to preview the content that will be studied in the unit. Students build background knowledge by completing the graphic organizer that requires them to find the information of the term and create a memory clue. Memory clues can be images, words or phrases that help jog their memories of the information learned.

Challenges- can become redundant and "unimportant" to students. Many students become lazy and do not want to complete the G.O.

students were given vocabulary in a printout, shown in a slide presentation. They were asked to take notes and discuss the words.

Vocabulary was presented the next day in the reading, showing how it looked in the reading as a text feature of the text and how the words were bolded as we read, also a text feature. Broadened the background knowledge.

Success- Using memory cues gives students the freedom to include information that they personally relate to in addition to the definition.

Challenge- Students lose interest and do not review the graphic organizer after they complete it.

Lesson: Words were divided into two groups based on level of difficulty. Students where put in groups of 3 and given a word that best fit their level based on their Lexile score.

Group one created a bubble chart with their word/term or person giving the definition in their own words. The around the bubble they would list facts/terms that would describe the topic and help them remember it's definition.

Group two created a Word Weber with the definition, a sentence, synonyms, examples of the synonyms and finally a sentence using one of the chosen synonyms.

Charts were placed around the room and used as we work through the unit.

Success: All students where engaged and finished during the class period. Created great visuals for the students.

Challenge: The only real challenge was initially dividing up the words and having enough words that we did not have to repeat.

Success:

Students were better prepared to complete assignment because they were familiar with the term

Challenge:

The term is broad, so it is challenging for students to grasp full meaning

Teaching Strategy

Success: Students were provided with the meaning of the SLOPE. Students were given examples by both teachers.

Lesson: The pros of this lesson students were able to understand the meaning of slope(positive, negative, zero, and undefined). The cons were some students needed more guided practice in using slope on the coordinate plane.

Used as a teaching strategy to learn new vocabulary with graphics.

Successes: Students stayed engaged with changing colors often (easy to spot off task students from a distance), the face in the middle made easy connections for students with the description.

Challenges: There were no examples of actually finding slope, so we moved from the vocab to using actual numbers to find slope.

Success Criteria: Understand words/phrases that represent each of the four operations.

Challenge: Identifying key words and remembering certain phrases requires you to switch the order of the expression.

Success: Students will have a resouce that they created to help them understand what a thesis is and how to use it correctly.

Challenges: Students in the past have a hard time disassociating a thesis for informational writing with that of a claim for argumentative.

Breaking down the vocabulary into actions and nouns for the standard.

Success:

By breaking down the standard into more common language, the students were able to better understand what the learning target and success criteria was asking for.

Challenge:

Some students do not have the background knowledge to think of more common language terms. There was some prompting that was needed.

Success: Students demonstrated their understanding of vocabulary terms used during instruction. This gave students an opportunity to go deeper with thier udnerstanding of the terms used during insturction.

Chanllenge: A few students needed direction in identifying the context of the term as it applied to the topic of study.

Success: Students understood the concept better.

Challenge: Some still struggled with the concept, but more in depth work will be done to remediate that.

Success: Students were able to utilize the glossary as many were not familiar with the concept. Upon defining the word and developing their own sentence, they were able to better understand the term as it relates to our body.

Challenge: Some students have limited experience with textbooks and looking up words in alphabetical order. Many medical terms are difficult to understand unless they are put in the context of a simple sentence.

Success: The students had to match the term to it's definition. To show they truly understand, they also have to match an example to the term and definition.

Challenge: Students were not motivated to work when they saw how many sticky notes there were, but once they got started and understand how to match them, they worked pretty hard on it. I had to model a few for them to truly understand the directions.

Learning Target: I Will use multiples and factors to identify missing values in tables, double number lines, and tape diagrams.

Success: Random students were attracted to the board and began completing the tables, etc. using the sticky notes.

Challenge: Encouraging students to refer to their notes while they practice.

Success: The students learn about Complementary, Supplementary, Adjacent and Vertical Angles. Students learn and have a visual of the angles and their measurements. To show their understanding of the vocabulary students complete the angles practice and before coloring they will review/check their work to ensure they know and understand the vocabulary and measurements.

Challenge: Prompting students to reference their notes as they work. This is a constant challenge for math teachers.

Success: Students utilize the mind map in order to refresh their memory on previous knowledge and use it later to integrate new information. Students work in groups which encourages discussion and creates a shared understanding.

Challenge: Prompting/encouraging students to revisit these notes as we progress through the unit in order to integrate new information.

Success:

Students can compare and contrast types of waves in a graphic organizer to help them visualize how the types of waves are similiar and how they are different.

Challenges:

Students may struggle with the drawing parts of the assignments and understanding how to fill it out.

Success: Students know exact words and phrases required for understanding basic content. Students can see similarities and differences very clearly.

Challenge: It is important to have the students take this drag & drop technology and transfer it to a paper version for quick reference and as a study tool.

Success: see above

Challenge: Students usually find this type of activity "boring" so teachers will have to get creative with use of color coding and/or doodle notes.

Challenge: Students struggle with "related words," so we asked them to pick their own key word(s) to help them remember the words meaning.

Success: Students have a visual to reference not only for a definition, but also what the part actually is in terms of the expression regards to powers and exponents. Students can use the visual to show they understand the specific part.

Challenges: Applying the basic knowledge of exponents to roots (square roots, cube roots, etc.) and scientific notation.

Lesson: Before watching the movie, "The Lorax", students were divided into groups of 2-4. Each group was assigned a slide with a word and had to fill in the following boxes: "Definition", "What does this look like?", "Examples", and "Non-Examples". Each student was able to access the same slideshow, so they were all working on the same slideshow as a whole class. The words on the slideshow would then be used in the following writing assignment where they had to use at least 4 of the words in the slideshow correctly in their writing.

Success: students were able to focus on one specific term related to human impacts and the movie. It was like a class anchor chart that they could reference again after watching the movie and seeing the words play out.

Challenges: Students didn't take much time to look at other groups' slides. In the future, I would probably have students make a comment on at least one other group's slide with a question about the word or how it is used. I had to be carefully monitoring the slideshow to make sure students were focused on their work and not making inappropriate comments.