Questions, Comments, and Feedback by

Amanda

2025-04-22 20:42:45 UTC

I love how you chose both stories that are relevant to your students' lives (the Scituate one) and ones from other contexts.

Amanda

2025-04-22 20:45:32 UTC

I really like the TRIAC model that you use, and I think that your strategies specifically for ELs are fantastic! It's clear that you're very intentional with your lessons and unit, and your students are very lucky to have you!

Amanda

2025-04-22 20:46:36 UTC

You are so thorough with your lessons, and I am highly impressed with your attention to detail. About how long will you give your students to write the paragraph? 30 min? 20 min?

Amanda

2025-04-22 20:46:56 UTC

I like how well thought out this is. I think it helps that you know your students and your school's models, and I will definitely use these in the future.

Eder

2025-04-22 20:53:58 UTC

I love how you highlighted cultural significance right away -- it is clear that your rationale is driven by culturally sustaining pedagogical principles!

Eder

2025-04-22 20:56:48 UTC

I like how creative this mini unit is! It's great that you are keeping your students' identities accountable and are forming your unit around what they know and what they will like doing.

Eder

2025-04-22 20:58:07 UTC

I love how your lesson plans are so deeply engrained in justice issues like climate change. I think students tend to be a lot more engaged when there are topics that actually relate to their personal lives, so this was awesome to hear about! I also like the use of the KWL model to gauge student's. responses

Eder

2025-04-22 21:00:07 UTC

I like how your lessons activate prior knowledge -- (KWL) in the first lesson. I additionally like how you have challenging lessons for your students but balance that with a creative assignment that piques their interests and keeps them engaged in the long run!

Eder

2025-04-22 21:02:53 UTC

What information / graphics will be on the posters?

Eder

2025-04-22 21:03:02 UTC

How would you plan to fairly assess your students' various projects? I love the ideas and flexibility!

Eder

2025-04-22 21:04:13 UTC

I love how you thought of ideas to include students who speak more languages than Spanish and English!

Emily

2025-04-22 21:12:34 UTC

How do you plan to structure/re-direct conversations if students get heated? I love the direct approach you are taking to talking about justice!

Emily

2025-04-22 21:13:58 UTC

I think that including any kind of media literacy portion in your lesson is really important, especially if you are going to be tackling how justice is portrayed in media compared to how it is in real life. It's one of the best ways to promote critical thinking in students and get them interested thinking deeply about what it is they watch.

Emily

2025-04-22 21:14:53 UTC

I like that you are gearing the lessons on both the micro and macro. I think justice is a topic that can get away from students' individual experiences but it's good for them to know that they are also involved in the justice system!

Emily

2025-04-22 21:14:59 UTC

What a tough but extremely important topic to teach! I really like how you break down the topic of justice down to its roots/vocabulary. It is so important to not assume that students know the definition of a topic, so I really like how you define what justice is! From there, students can apply this to readings, presentations, and current events.

Emily

2025-04-22 21:15:31 UTC

I really like the student agency piece for the final project. There are good guardrails in place for you to be able to assess what they have taken away from the unit, but they get to pick the topic, whether it is micro or macro, etc. Really nice balance!

Emily

2025-04-22 21:19:16 UTC

How will you deal with any conflicts that arise from any section of this unit-plan? How would you deal with someone feeling offended?

Liv

2025-04-22 21:25:39 UTC

I like the idea of putting math within identity because something I struggled with a lot in math was not understanding why we were doing something or how it related to me. I like that you are letting students watch a movie, too, because it breaks up the regular math classroom.

Liv

2025-04-22 21:25:49 UTC

My one questions deals with the fact of timing. I don't know if it was just my math teachers in high school had little time, but it always seemed like my math teachers were rushing to get through math content objectives during the school year. How do you plan to complete the rest of the standards during the year? Could you weave in this identity project alongside a math lesson?

Liv

2025-04-22 21:26:07 UTC

I love this topic; this would get me engaged in my math class because it shows that math connects to the humanities (even though it may not look like it).

Liv

2025-04-22 21:26:07 UTC

I really like the way that you tie in identity into math because it's such a good way to engage students, and I've never heard of people doing that for math! It will definitely be great for kids who don't always love math. Awesome job!

Liv

2025-04-22 21:26:47 UTC

Great idea incorporating math and identity! The science teacher on my grade level team did something similar with his students and they really enjoyed it

Liv

2025-04-22 21:32:09 UTC

I am so thrilled you chose to center this lesson on the identity of mathematicians. I took a history of mathematics course in undergrad that opened my eyes to so many other areas of the world and their contributions to math. Most people have no idea that most of what we know about algebra actually comes from the Arab Empire. Really nice scaffolding!

Liv

2025-04-22 21:34:06 UTC

I found it so interesting how you were able to connect identity to math. I wish I could've had a class like this. I also like the documentary portion and felt like this could be a good way of keeping students motivated.

CC

2025-04-22 21:42:17 UTC

I like how scaffolded your lessons are. I like the use of sentence stems and hooks to use because in writing, starting from scratch can be really hard and it helps to have a starting point.

CC

2025-04-22 21:44:11 UTC

I like the way that you use a ton of EL resources and are able to recognize that these resources are important for all students, so no one feels isolated

CC

2025-04-22 21:44:26 UTC

I really like how explicit your MLL-friendly strategies are...I feel like I might have to use some of these :) Especially the "explicit instruction on rules of writing"

CC

2025-04-22 21:47:18 UTC

I really admire your ability and goal to make materials more MLL-friendly because this makes these materials become something that works for ALL students.

Rigo

2025-04-22 21:51:53 UTC

I am a sucker for a Frayer Model! I like how you are having students focus on multiple vocab words for the unit...how will you reinforce the words they have learned in the future?

Rigo

2025-04-22 21:58:01 UTC

I wonder if the map of the U.S. do-now would be better if you included the state lines. I didn't realize that there was another country on the left side but I still chose it because of Alaska. I think if you showed a picture of the state lines and the country(s) names it would be more comprehensible, but obviously there's no right or wrong answer.

Rigo

2025-04-22 22:01:44 UTC

I really liked the your DO-NOW. It is really engaging and even though you said you were still tweaking it, I think it did its job. A DO-NOW is supposed to ACTIVATE student learning and I believe that we as a class were a clear example of this. I will take this idea for myself. ty

Rabia

2025-04-22 22:10:36 UTC

I like how you made great use of collaborative and peer feedback. I think this really helpful for ML students. Would you consider group peer review pairs by L1?

Beth

2025-04-22 22:21:22 UTC

I like the idea of translating the Missouri Compromise handout to the unfilled handout. I wonder if students will copy word-for-word the unfilled portion and how you will go about summary versus actual understanding.