Throughout the Unit, we have incorporated many strategies to meet the needs of our diverse learner population. These strategies are supported by research and offer every student the opportunity of success in this Unit.
1. Vocabulary Support Page : This page is provided for English Learners and Students with IEPs and 504 Plans, as well as any other student who may find some of the vocabulary in this unit challenging. The page will assist students in both their English and Science classroom and can be used as a reference throughout the unit. This vocab page works as a form of scaffolding, which research shows as one of the most effective instructional strategies (Graves, Graves, & Braaten, 1996).
2. Graphic Organizer for Online Simulation Activity. This graphic organizer helps students organize their ideas and support them as they create their group poster.
Graphic Organizer for Final Writing Assignment: This Graphic Organizer helps students organize their thoughts before they start the final writing project. It supports all students as it helps them break the essay into more manageable chunks.
Graphic Organizer for the Water Quality Lab. This will help students record their data and can be used as a reference for what each test means in terms of estuary health and the units used.
3.PowerPoint This PowerPoint is used in the English lesson on the third day. It contains a lot of visuals as examples of what ethos, pathos, and logos look like. This support is a Universally Designed Lesson support as it will benefit not only EL and SPED students, but visual learners as well. According to Rose and Gravel, UDL strategies meet the needs of "the broadest possible range of students" (2010). The interactive aspect of the lesson, where students are identifying the rhetorical strategies in the advertisements (found in PowerPoint) supports all types of learners. This PowerPoint also is a Vocabulary support for the English terms that students will need to know and use throughout the unit.
4. Flexible Grouping (link to grouping research) is a differentiation strategy weaved throughout the Unit. Throughout each day of the lessons in both their Science and English classes, students are directed to work in multiple different group settings:
Teacher led groups: whole class instruction, small group instruction,
Student Led groups: collaborative groups, table groups.
5. Multi-sensory Differentiation: The collaborative group project includes multi-sensory differentiation strategies. Visual and hands on learners will benefit from the interactive simulation activity that students participate in. This activity supports these learners, because they learn by doing. Students work through the simulation to learn about their carbon footprint, instead of merely reading about carbon foot prints or receiving the information from the teacher.
Visual learners will benefit from the Powerpoint on Invasive species done on Day 3 of the Science lessons while Kinesthetic and Logical learners will benefit from the Water Quality testing lab and the invasive species game where students are active in collecting data and simulating invasive fish in a lake.
6. Rhetorical Precise Sentence Builder: This graphic organizer helps students organize their sentences for the final project and English lesson on Day 2.
7. Student Choice: The final project allows students choice on several aspects of the assignment. Students choose the environmental topic that most interests them, the format they would like to write their persuasive piece in, and the way they want to present their information to the class. Lastly, in the service aspect of the final, students are able to choose if they want to create a poster, commercial, or newspaper article as a way to increase awareness about their topic.
8. Accessible Texts: During the Invasive Species (Day 3) science lesson, students are to perform a close reading of an article about Buffalo on Catalina Island from the Wall Street Journal. This article includes italicized words and easy to follow headings to help students with reading comprehension.
During the Day 2 English lesson, students will be doing a group jigsaw on water pollution articles. The articles include bolded key words, images, and headings to assist students comprehend the main ideas of the articles.