James Wiseman EDRD619: Disciplinary Literacy

         Making Content Connections                            Your Name: _James Wiseman________________ Date: _6/25/25____________  Lesson Goal: I can orally describe the polarity of water molecules using manipulatives using complete sentences. Content Area: Biology Specific Topic: BIO.2: The student will investigate and understand that chemical and biochemical processes are essential for life. Grade 9th - 10th Estimated Time: Portion of class (max 30 min) Strategy  Think - Pair - Share Describe how the strategy is used as a before-during- and/or after-reading activity (List steps of strategy) Either before, during, or after a reading activity, the teacher will pose a question to students. The teacher will give students a short time for students to think independently. Then the teacher will tell students to turn to a p...

Link might be easier to read:  https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jMci1GftwAtsaF56ZT_BsOINEdM9Tt1S/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=105211804050911235598&rtpof=true&sd=true   List 3 key ideas from your readings this week [1 from your textbook/ 1 from the Fang and Park article/1 from your choice article]. Fisher and Frey concludes that when students are writing they are thinking. The authors provide the reader with several different modes for the students to write in that encourages learning. Fang and Park discuss the difficulties of using discipline specific language in writing as these words are not commonly found in the students common lexicon. Also identifying a students family's economic standing can effect linguistic skills developed by the student. Lastly, Park and Logsdon expand the idea in science students cannot completely understand observations they see in a classroom without being able to descriptively record what they see. List 2 strategies you will incorporate ...

These questions were selected to help students better understand VA standard BIO.4ABCDE. In previous classes students struggle with the concept that viruses are not actually considered alive based on current understanding. Current understanding places that viruses more likely evolved from traveling genetic material like plasmids then originating from a self dividing organism. Because of this, how viruses replicate is a common mistaken question on SOL tests. The questions are a mix of literal and interpretive to encourage thinking of the big picture of this unit. The concept map  can be fill-in-the-blank to direct thinking. I wanted to help students understand that even though immune responses to viruses and bacteria may be similar, they are very different.    

 

link to plan: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jsOjNNd0aYV40jZ9VYU53gWe8Hsoocn7/view?usp=sharing  PRS: I would focus on prefix an- and the suffix -ion to continue student understanding. Prefix an Gesture: forming an "X" with my hands Image: image of blank face (anonymous) Suffix ion Gesture: hands coming together Image: image of breathing cycle with arrows showing the movement of air in and out of the lungs. Sample Card: Reflection: In this week's lesson I resonated strongly with the need to not just teach students the vocabulary but to understand word knowledge. Creating tiers to best focus on vocabulary words is a practice I will bring to my CLT meetings in the coming year to better facilitate educational time in class. Science is concentrated with vocabulary and understanding the prefixes and suffixes greatly will aid in student retention. In previous classes I saw that 80-90% of the vocabulary in science uses prefixes and suffixes. Adding on to this a majority of ...

reading: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YS1KT0o9op34N-g6bMtT3XqfrhfzNHDa/view?usp=sharing The DJ helped me focus on the most important sections of the assignment. This allowed me to review the background knowledge needed to best understand the text and provided the information in a repeatable way where the student can return to at any time to reflect and review the information of the text without rereading everything. This leads into the greatest strength of the DJ is that it can act as a review point as we approach summative and formative assessments. Using more common language creates a better jumping off point for the student. I think next time I would attempt to be more flashy with my presentation. Our students have been shown to have a short attention span, data I have collected for my own assessments show a drastic decline in question reading time when taking summative assessments over 20 questions. Providing DJs can also help in vocabulary retention, providing an example and...