EDCI 602: Blog # 1: Learning Goals

I am one of two lead teachers teaching English 8 during summer school. So, I was responsible for only three of the first six lesson plans that we submitted as a class. In addition, one of those three was for the period that we used to administer the pre-test, so for some more obvious reasons, I am going to omit commentary on that lesson and its objectives. The two remaining lessons plans that I wrote had objectives that related to different, important aspects of subject-verb agreement (knowing what subjects and verbs are, pronouns, understanding what it is to be “singular” versus “plural”). So between the two lessons, I broke down the concept of Subject-Verb Agreement into fundamental steps to help explain the idea to the students in a more effective manner. My first goal for the students was to have them understand what a subject is and the difference between it and a noun. Next, I wanted them to understand what a verb is. The students needed to be able to identify both the subject and the verb in a sentence. The third goal was to have them understand the difference between singular and plural, another essential step in understanding subject-verb agreement. After the students could demonstrate competency in explaining and identifying these things, I wanted the class to put the basics together to create sentence with correct subject-verb agreement (SVA). Another important aspect of this topic, however, is to know which indefinite pronouns are singular and plural so those too could be appropriately used in sentences.
I feel the goals I set up for them were important due to how essential they are to being able to speak and write using Standard English. The student’s ability to understand and use correct SVA will help their own writing and overall achievement in school. Also, I feel that having SVA as one of the first topics to be covered in the class provided insight into the students’ prior knowledge on the topic specifically and a “heads up” as to what issues some of them may have in the classroom in regards to writing (we had 2 – 3 big writing projects scheduled for the students within those three weeks.
For the more simple concepts that were also easy for me to teach, I had no problem giving a definition for a part of speech, review sample sentences that highlight the important part being discussed, and later assigning a worksheet to be completed in class. I wanted to spend time on the ideas, but not discuss them extensively. I spent more time explaining how to actually use correct SVA in writing and when discussing indefinite pronouns, since those were less “fact” and more “concept.” I included an inductive instructional strategy in one of my lesson plans; its purpose was to review the topics we had covered on SVA. By locating the grammar errors in a badly written paragraph (without any help from me on what they should specifically be looking for), the students would effectively review the concepts just taught to them as well as develop the ability to edit work (an important aspect of the writing process, a topic they would begin work on before the end of the week.