Lagurdia GED Bridge Class January 24, 2014

 

Before class I met with Jason to discuss topics for my 4 lesson plans.  We have tentatively set the topics as Grammar, identifying arguments and supports, writing development (developing a paragraph, looking at organizational structure, compare and contrast), and the fourth to be determined.  Jason stated that the lesson plan should include a project, lesson, worksheet and a summative assessment.  While we were talking he was looking at the website corestandards.org.  I will take a look at this site as I go about developing a lesson plan on grammar.  My thoughts were that I would tie in my lesson plan with his class, but things are not working that way.  The syllabus does not indicate any due dates and I am not sure what Jason is using as a class plan.  It seemed fine for me to take a topic and just go for it.  Also, while watching Jason in class and the methods he uses to get through a topic, I realized that Jason is breaking down the topic to a level of simplicity that I am going to have to work to get to.

For the grammar lesson plan I think that I am going to work in “Grammar in a Nutshell,” as a part of the lesson.  Maybe it will be an offering at the end of the class.

Wynne came in while Jason and I were talking and handed me a packet about the Bridge Program.  The packet that she handed to me will make me an expert on the Bridge program.

The class started at 6PM.  Before we entered Jason got a note that one of the students could not attend.   The Bridge team has asked students to communicate their situations. 

Jason starts the class by handing out a worksheet on percentages.  He invited the class to fill out the sheet and for volunteers to go up to the board and write up one part of the sheet.  It appears that the students had a homework packet.  The class plan was to hand in something for the “Rising Costs of College.”  There was a warm up (which was the homework on the board), a lesson on summarizing which included a 6 word memoir, notes and a project.  The class was going to end with writing a summary and explaining how it was done.

When people wrote up their answers on the board, I realized that this class was as basic as it could get.  Jason was teaching percentages in a way that I thought was different.  For instance in order to figure out 75% of something, you could add 50% + 25% and get the answer.  I tried to think of how I do percentages.  I definitely go straight to ¾ of?  But perhaps this method does not work well for these students or there is a new way of teaching percentages.  Anyhow, Jason went through each problem on the board.  He taught how to come up with the answer to a problem by using the process of elimination and doing the percentage more or less.  He showed the class how some answers can be distracters.  A distracter is when a multiple choice answer has been provided to half of the word problem leading you to answer the wrong way.  He showed the class how to estimate your way to an answer if the numbers being used looked complex.    The class seemed to understand the work.

The next thing Jason went on to is summarizing.  He hands out a sheet of examples of 6 word memoirs.  On the flip side of the sheet there was a box for the student’s to write their 6 word memoir followed by 2 questions:  What did you have to do to write the 6 word memoir and what is difficult about writing a 6 word memoir?  Writing the 6 word memoir was difficult for a lot of the students.  Jason walked around the class encouraging people, coaxing them to keep going.  With one student he encouraged him to just start writing to get through writers block.  Frankly, I would have difficulty writing in the class as well.  I write best all by myself with no distractions.  So I was marveling at the focus that the students had.  At 6:43 he asked people to share their results.  Jason took time and let everybody share their writing and Jason coaxed them to talk about the difficulty they had in writing it.  Jason posted a definition of summarizing on the board and started the process of writing a diagram of the process of summarizing.  The diagram included Summarizing in the center with bubble off shoots that said (what to leave out, what to leave in), (important points), (re-read or look back), (use words economically), and (structure and organize).  He broke down the parts of a summary: topic sentence, most important info, concluding sentence. He posted on the board how to write a summary which came off his work sheet.

Finally Jason passes out the worksheet “Introduction to the Rising Costs of College,” and asks the class to get into groups of 3-4, write up their summary to the article, talk about their findings and then as a group get together and post their result on a huge sheet, which was hung on the walls of the class.  Then the room went around explaining how they came up with their final result.  This was a really difficult lesson to teach and to learn.  The group that I was closest to looked to me for advice.  I felt a little shy to offer assistance because I felt that my methods were more old-school.  One of the students was having difficulty discerning the difference between a summary and persuasive piece.  I felt this young man’s pain, because this was high level performing.  There was a lot to be confused about and not a lot of time to figure it out.  The groups helped each other with this.  The group I was observing had one young man woosh through the summary and the other 2 struggling to write their piece.  So the finished piece got posted while the other 2 struggled to finalize their work.  The young man who easily completed his summary was shy to post his work because there was a case of where a verb did not agree. He asked me about this and I tried to help, but I did not know how to teach that lesson.  The word was rised versus risen.  The right word was risen, but I didn’t know how to explain to him why this was the right answer.  Anyhow, I was amazed that he really only had one example of verb non agreement, and his speech included a heavy Spanish accent.  This young man was impressive.  The other young man struggled all the way through the writing and took the whole class to do it.  He was impressive as well. 

Jason went over 9PM to let every group have a chance to read their summary.  Jason commented thoughtfully on each presentation.  He used an approach that heavily complemented what was done well and also had some interesting critiques.  I was trying to imagine myself in Jason’s position right then, and I am not sure that I could have done what he was doing.  He was keeping things so clear and simple.