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Hayley CunninghamWOK Humanities

LAP 4: “Home” by Jeannie Baker

I. Content : Describe what it is you will teach. What is the content?

Students will expand their concept of home to include community. Students will explore the book Home by Jeannie Baker. Although the book contains no words, it shows powerful images of how the view of the street from Tracy’s room changes over the years. In conjunction with the book, students will also have the chance to view photographs of Main South Worcester from the past.

II. Learning Goal(s) : Describe what specifically students will know and be able to do after the experience of this class. Students will continue building their self-perception of home. Students will able to recognize that community is a form of home. Students will be able to reflect on community in their self-perception of home.

III. Rationale : Explain how the content and learning goal(s) relate to your Curriculum Unit Plan learning goals.

This lesson is the next step in the unit sequence for students to build their perception of home. Thus far, students have come to understand home as a shelter (a physical structure), as well as understanding home as having emotions, memories and images of family tied to it. This lesson is next to build students into thinking of their community, Worcester, as a branch of home.

IV. Assessment : Describe how you and your students will know they have reached your learning goals.

Students will be informally assessed through engagement with the activity, and student ability to effectively engage in turn and talks and whole class discussions. Students will be formally assessed with a handout. I will know that students have reached my learning goals if they are able to include community into their perception of home in their drawings.

V. Personalization and equity : Describe how you will provide for individual student strengths and needs. How will you and your lesson consider the needs of each student and scaffold learning? How specifically will ELL students and students with learning disabilities gain access and be supported?

This lesson focuses highly on visuals, which serves as comprehensible input for the ELLs in the classroom. In this way, students will be able to engage in content in an environment with a low affective filter. Furthermore, many of the ELL students in my classroom have trouble articulating their understanding verbally. According to Gibbons, teachers should give students different means to showcase their understanding. This lesson uses art as that medium.

Furthermore, according to the authors of Integrating the Arts Across the Content Areas, the arts are paramount to strengthening curriculum. Integrating art into this lesson is my attempt to allow students to tap into their creativity. Most importantly, arts integration provides multiple

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ways for students to make sense of what they learn and makes their learning visible. In other words, it enables students to construct understanding and demonstrate their understanding. It challenges students to take information and do something with it to build deeper understanding. Using art, through photographs and drawings, as a medium for this lesson, will hopefully propel my students to extended their perception of home to include community.

VI. Activity description and agenda a. Describe the activities that will help your students understand the content of your

class lesson by creating an agenda with time frames for your class. Be prepared to explain why you think each activity will help students on the path toward understanding.

Time Teacher Activity Student Activity Materials Needed1-3 Minutes Read-aloud the

message from the author (Jeannie Baker).

Actively ListenMonitor Understanding

Home

3-5 Minutes Read the synopsis excerpt from the beginning of the book.

Actively ListenMonitor Understanding

Home

5-15 Minutes Show the collages in the book Home

Ask students to find similarities and differences in the collages.

Facilitate discussion on how Tracy’s neighborhood has changed over the years.

Analyze collages from the book

Look for similarities and differences in the collages from the book.

Home

15-25 Minutes Show photographs of Worcester from the past with a primary focus on Clark University, Main Street, and Crystal Park.

Promote discussion on how Worcester has changed and our hopes for Worcester.

Look at photographs and look for ways Worcester has changed.

Photographs from Postcard History Series: Worcester

25-27 Minutes Facilitate Discussion: Turn & Talk:

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Do you consider Worcester to be part of your home?

Do you consider Worcester to be part of your home?

27-40 Minutes Explain Activity

Filter through classroom, ask questions,answer student misconceptions, and probe students into further thinking.

Draw a picture of the scene from your own window.

Draw a picture of what you hope the scene from your window will look like in 10 years.

HandoutsCrayons

b. What particular challenges, in terms of student learning or implementing planned activity, do you anticipate and how will you address them?

Some students in my class have recently moved to Worcester. I anticipate them not being able to fully connect with the community especially when we look at pictures from Worcester’s past. In order to address this, I’ll ask them to think about our trip to Clark University and reflect on how it has changed. Furthermore, some students may not have a window in their home or bedroom. This might pose challenges when they are drawing their viewpoint. If this is the case, I’ll ask them to draw what they see outside when they step out the door.

VII. List the Massachusetts Learning Standards this lesson addresses.

SL.4.1 Engage effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in groups, and teacher-led) with diverse partners on grade 4 topics and texts, building on others’ ideas and expressing their own clearly.

VIII. Reflection

a. In light of all areas of planning, but especially in terms of your stated purpose and learning goals, in what ways was the activity successful? How do you know? In what ways was it not successful? How might the activity be planned differently another time?

Despite a few attention issues, this lesson went great! The collages from Home were a hit. The students were so interested in seeing how old Tracy was in each of the photos and looking for the clues that indicated her age. They also got so excited over what had changed in the picture and what had stayed the same- especially the Pizza Hut billboard in the background. They made it into a game to see who could find the most changes. It was so fun to watch them

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get so excited over. We then had an overarching discussion of what aspect of the community changed the most- they understood that more plants and trees grew and the community was rebuilt to be beautiful.

Students also got excited over the pictures from Worcester, especially the photograph I found of Goddard from the early 1900s. They loved seeing Clark and how much it had changed and progressed. They also loved figuring out what angle the photographs from Crystal Pond were taken from. While looking at the photos, I gave students a mini-history lesson on Worcester and some fun facts I thought they’d enjoy, such that two construction workers died building the extension to Goddard (where Kindergarten and 1st grade classrooms are).

I knew my learning goals had been met when students discussed if they considered Worcester to be a part of their home. Many students did! After their turn and talk we shared as a whole class. Students discussed how Worcester was their home because that’s we’re their memories are. They talked about how their family lives in Worcester and that when they go on vacation and come back they feel happy to be home. Students who were not born in Worcester, but in other cities such as Lynn and Boston, talked about how those cities felt like home to them because their families and memories are tied to them. This is exactly what I wanted to happen and it was great that they were able to come to this on their own.

The window-drawing piece was so-so. Gianni, student sample 1 was one of the only students to complete a drawing. He drew the road he sees from his window and in 10 years he hopes to see tons of trees growing in his backyard. Overall, if I were to plan this lesson again, I wouldn’t do the window drawing during the same time block. I felt that it was overkill. My students were meeting my learning goals and adding the piece of them drawing what they saw from their window and what they hope to see in 10 years was too much for a 40-minute block. Many students did great with their window drawings, but there wasn’t enough time to draw. It was also the end of the day so students were getting a little restless. If I were to do it again, I would continue this portion on another day so that student’s can have time to reflect on their hopes for the community and spend time drawing.

b. What did you learn from the experience of this lesson that will inform your next LAP?

From this lesson, I learned that my students love primary source photographs. They loved examining the past. This is particularly important for my History Unit. I will be showing many primary source photographs and this lesson taught me that students will receive them well. Hopefully my students will be as enthusiastic about those photographs as much as they were for these ones.

Furthermore, I learned to try not to pack so much into one lesson. For my next humanities lesson, I will try to be more conscious of time and make a realistic time estimate of how long it will take my students to complete an activity. My students like to take their time and sometimes it takes them a while to settle down after a transition. I now realize that I need to take this into account whilst planning.

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Appendix

Student Sample 1

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