End of School Year Lessons Part 1

I cannot believe I am sharing our end-of-course lessons and project! This year, though like no other, went by so fast. So, here we are admiring how far our newcomers had come. 

This school year, I had a couple of ESL student teachers so I didn't plan as many lessons for our newcomers as I usually do.
Though there were so many challenges this school year - teaching with masks, social distancing, balancing hybrid teaching and learning, and so much more; I'm glad we made it through successfully. 
                                                                              ~~~~~~~~~~
I started taking over my newcomers class in mid-April and I was so excited to do so. Since one of my student teachers was still teaching my class, I'd one day teach students on campus and another day I'd teach students online.
Of course, my first go-to resource as I began planning was Saddleback books! We read two books that lead to our end-of-year project.

Lessons #1

• Review: identifying characters and settings in a story
• New topic: Analyze how characters develop through the story.

Since my student teacher had taught students how to identify characters and settings in stories, I thought having a quick review would just strengthen this skill. 

We started by reading aloud "New Girl" - a mystery story part of the Engage Saddleback kit. 
Halfway through the reading, students did a drag & drop activity identifying the characters (names) and settings (places) in our story.

Once we completed the story, we played a scratch and text-match activity. Newcomers need to see and hear the text and be able to find it within the book. 
I gave them a list of sentences that describe  the conflict (problem) & the clues in the story. We read them out loud and practice reading by ourselves. This was a great reading practice for all. 
For accountability, each student had their page to show work and engagement. See Jamboard pages 3-7.

Character development:
To explain character development, we discussed how characters change throughout the story. To identify these changes, we look at how the characters' feelings (emotions) change from the beginning of the story to the end.  We look at the characters' words (what he says) that show change in character. And we look closely at the characters' actions (what they do).
I thought the images would help them understand what I was explaining. 
Together we worked on identifying how our character Cole developed throughout the story. Our focus was: 

• How did he feel?
• What did he say?
• What did he do?

---

Read More