Each day teachers use differentiated instructional, remediation, and intervention strategies designed to meet the diverse needs of students in their classrooms. Using knowledge of the Science of Reading, Scarborough’s Reading Rope, and research-based best practices, is a critical skill to ensure that instruction can help all students perform key tasks associated with English language arts.
Part 1: Teacher Interview
To gain an understanding of the students you will be working with and to learn more about how to apply the Science of Reading and integrate creative arts when instructing students in ELA, interview a PreK teacher. You will submit a copy of your interview notes. For the interview, focus on addressing each of the following:
- Describe the literacy needs and abilities (reading, writing, speaking, and listening) of the students you typically teach.
- Discuss the various literacy skills that are typically taught at the grade level(s) you most frequently teach.
- Explain how you apply your knowledge of the Science of Reading, Scarborough’s Reading Rope, and research-based instructional best practices.
- Discuss how creative arts (dance, music, theater, and art) are integrated in the classroom. Include discussion about how the creative arts can engage and motivate students and help to meet their individual learning needs.
- Describe specific instructional strategies you have used to integrate creative arts into your ELA instruction.
- Describe explicit, systematic, cumulative, and multisensory instructional strategies that you employ in the classroom to teach reading, writing, speaking, and listening, and provide an example of each.
- Describe how exceptionalities, including dyslexia, can affect the acquisition of reading and writing skills. Provide examples of how these exceptionalities can vary in presentation and degree within the classroom.
- Describe strategies for collecting formal and informal data and using assessments to help you make decisions about ELA instruction, remediation, and intervention strategies that are appropriate for your students.
Part 2: Classroom Observation
Upon completion of the interview, observe the teacher teaching or co-teaching at least one ELA lesson in the classroom. You will submit a copy of your observation notes. Record information related to the following:
- Instructional strategies and activities, particularly those associated with teaching/reinforcing word recognition, language comprehension, writing, speaking, and listening skills and integration of creative arts
- Differentiated instruction for small groups and individual students
- Remediation strategies
- Intervention strategies
- Student grouping during instruction, remediation, and intervention activities
- Reading and writing materials and genres
- Activities and assignments that integrate creative arts (dance, music, theater, and art)
- Informal and formal assessment activities and data collection related to ELA skills, including reading, writing, speaking, and listening
Reflect on what you learned from your interview and classroom observation by addressing the following.
- Discuss the effectiveness of the instruction you observed in meeting the diverse needs of the students in the class.
- Describe the remediation and intervention strategies that seemed to be most effective in meeting the needs of the students in the classroom.
- Discuss additional opportunities for differentiating instruction for students to better address their needs. Include a discussion of the challenges
- that could be faced when attempting to provide this level of differentiation.
- Describe what you discussed in the interview and/or observed regarding integrating creative arts in the ELA classroom. Discuss a specific strategy or activity you would like to use in your future professional practice to integrate the creative arts. Explain why you selected the strategy/activity and how it will help to engage and motivate students and meet their diverse learning needs.
Submit a copy of your interview and observation notes and the reflection as a single Word document.
Rubric Criteria
Discussion of the effectiveness of the instruction observed in meeting the diverse needs of students in the class is thoughtful.
Interviews and observation notes are thorough and substantial.
Description of the remediation and intervention strategies that worked best to meet the needs of the students in the classroom is advanced.
Discussion of additional opportunities for differentiating instruction for students to better address their needs, including discussion of the challenges that could be faced when attempting to provide this level of differentiation, is insightful.
Description of interview discussion and classroom observation regarding integrating creative arts into the ELA classroom is substantial.
Discussion of a specific strategy or activity to be used to integrate creative arts in future professional practice and an explanation of why the strategy was selected and how it will help to engage and motivate students and meet diverse learning needs is insightful.
The content is well-organized and logical. There is a sequential progression of ideas that relate to each other. The content is presented as a cohesive unit and provides the audience with a clear sense of the main idea.
No mechanical errors are present. Skilled control of language choice and sentence structure are used throughout.
