Fermilab LInC Online

Montgomery County to the Rescue!

Unit Description Before LInC

I did not teach this unit before. This represented a new effort to integrate content area in both language arts/language acquisition (which I normally teach at this grade level) and social studies.

In previous years, language arts instruction would have focused more exclusively on fictional stories. Vocabulary would be introduced using games, music, or practice activities (such as sight word drills). Then a comprehension objective (such as identifying the beginning, middle and end of a story) would be introduced and modeled by the teacher, and then practiced by students independently. Their written product would serve as the source of assessment data.

Social studies content would be taught in a separate class with the homeroom teacher (I pull children out of their homeroom for reading/language arts instruction). The topic of diversity in the community might be taught by reading stories or looking for related current events in the newspaper. The activity would be mostly teacher-directed, with students following instructions. Students would probably not work in groups. Assessment would probably be based on some written product, such as a paragraph expressing thoughts and feelings about the community.