Evidence: I adapted a set of context clue task cards I found online and printed them to create an ‘evidence’ folder used to solve a riddle.
Justification: This standard states that instructional resources are effective at actively engaging students during a lesson. An effective instructional resource supports students’ learning by giving them another resource to refer to or practice with.
In this lesson plan, I helped my students practice using context clues to figure out words that were unknown to them. They had already been taught the information in a previous lesson, and I was helping them review. I was having the students solve a ‘mystery’. After the students answered the question on the ‘Evidence’ sheet, then their answers would spell out the answer of the mystery. In this lesson I used several instructional resources to help make the lesson more engaging for the students. First, I selected an autumn joke that the students would be finding the answer to. Then, I adapted a set of context clue task cards I found online. I adapted some of the sentence’ length so that the students wouldn’t be overwhelmed by the sentence’s structure. My sentences acted as my pieces of ‘evidence’. I created sheets that had the sentences with multiple-choice. The multiple-choice answers had a certain letter assigned to them that would spell out the answer to the joke. I printed these sheets and added them to a manila folder.
I believe this piece of evidence supports the standard in three ways:
- As the teacher, I adapted resources I found online to the reading level of my students. They were able to easily interact with the ‘evidence’ cards.
- Students were able to solve the riddle, meaning the activity was a successful review of their skills.
- The students were excited to solve the ‘mystery’, and most of the students said they wanted to do the activity again. I think this proves that the activity was engaging to them and allowed them to practice using context clues.