Lesson 3

2. Think about a joke or cartoon that you didn’t understand, such as from a late-show monologue or a political cartoon. Why was it confusing or un-amusing? What information would you have needed for it to make sense? What are the implications for teaching content to all students, including English learners?

There was recently a two-frame political cartoon out of Australia that shows a large soldier looking down at a smaller, hooded man (a terrorist?) with a bomb in his hand in the first frame, with the date 9/11/2001 at the top. The second frame has the same soldier and hooded man with bomb, but the sizes are reversed. The soldier is now small, and the hooded man is large, with the date 9/11/2010 at the top. This cartoon may have made more sense, to me at least, if the frames had been reversed. Back in 2001, the terrorist was dominant, having taken down the Twin Towers, and now in 2010, after we have been fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, we have gained more control and become fore powerful. As the cartoon stands, I would need someone to interpret it for me. I am very aware of what is happening in these Middle Eastern countries, yet I am confused as to what this cartoon was trying to convey. When teaching content to students, a clear and decisive explanation of the content may be necessary beforehand to be sure everyone is ‘on the same page.’

3. If you are creating a SIOP lesson, how will you activate student’s prior knowledge and build background? What connections to past learning can you make? What are your key vocabulary words and how will you teach them? An instructor can build background by presenting books, articles, graphics, and/or video to set the stage for the lesson to be taught. A teacher must ‘find out what a student knows or has experienced, then link their knowledge to the lesson objective’ (pg. 76). Defining terms and supporting the student’s understanding of the words is necessary if they are to remember them. In this chapter, Mrs. Jarmin, a teacher, presented three guidelines to help students with vocabulary words: predicting, clarifying and questioning (pg 71). The first step was ‘predicting’ where the students told what they thought the story was about by looking at the title of the book they were going to read, as well as illustrations. Secondly, she had the students clarify words they were unfamiliar with, even highlighting words they didn’t understand. These words became key vocabulary words. She equated these words with words she felt they already knew, for example: ‘ill’ means ‘sick’. Lastly, students were encouraged to question the meaning of the words and used a thesaurus to help clear up any confusion. After presenting the video, Mrs. Jarmin used a Venn diagram illustrating the differences between fiction and fantasy.The last question in #3 is ‘What are your key vocabulary words and how would you teach them?” I have never been apprehensive about using ideas from people I think of as expert teachers. I would emulate Mrs. Jarmin, having the students chose which words to use.