Month: January 2023

Why I no longer like blogs about teaching (or cooking)

Published on by Sandy Davis

I wish I did! I have found some really wonderful resources (and recipes!) while reading blogs. This morning I went looking for resources on teaching students to keep a writer’s notebook and found some good information. However, I’ve noticed a disturbing new trend. EVERY teaching and education blog is starting to look the same and is heading in the same direction as cooking blogs: bloated with too many pictures and fancy fonts, packed with ads, slow to load, and tedious to navigate. They have become repetitive with very little content and substance.

I get it. People are trying to appeal to an an alogrithm, an aesthetic, and an audience. But I am not that audience. I don’t care about pinterest-worthy classroom set-ups, or fancy fonts, or cutsy clip art. I want writing, information, and resources. I want honesty. I want help! I think teachers are working to hard to brand themselves like influencers, and it makes it harder and harder to wade through the crap and find quality resources.

In writing this blog (ELAsource), I want to provide useful information, some relevant stories about my classroom experiencs, and easy to find and navigate resources.

What do YOU want in a teaching blog? Please let me know in the comments below! I would love to hear from you. ❤

A Guide to SIOP Lesson Plans

Published on by Sandy Davis

What is a SIOP Lesson Plan?

A SIOP lesson plan is a type of lesson plan that is designed to support the academic and language needs of English language learners (ELLs). The acronym SIOP stands for Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol, and it refers to a set of instructional strategies and techniques that are used to make content more accessible to ELLs.

The SIOP model is supporting of language learning for ALL students and focuses on vocabulary review and literacy-based instructional strategies.

A SIOP lesson plan typically includes the following components:

  1. Pre-lesson preparation: This includes activities such as setting up the classroom, gathering materials, and reviewing the lesson objectives.
  2. Building background knowledge: This includes activities such as providing background information about the topic, making connections to prior knowledge, and activating prior knowledge.
  3. Comprehensible input: This includes activities such as providing clear explanations and examples, using visual aids and graphic organizers, and using gestures and body language to support understanding.
  4. Strategies: This includes activities such as using graphic organizers, making predictions, and asking and answering questions to promote critical thinking and problem-solving skills.
  5. Interaction: This includes activities such as pair and group work, think-pair-share, and other techniques to promote interaction and collaboration among students.
  6. Practice and application: This includes activities such as assigning homework, conducting hands-on activities, and using authentic materials to provide opportunities for students to practice and apply what they have learned.
  7. Review and assessment: This includes activities such as formative and summative assessments to evaluate student understanding and progress.

Overall, the goal of a SIOP lesson plan is to provide a supportive and inclusive learning environment for ELLs and to help them acquire the language and academic skills they need to succeed in school.

I’ve included two forms of the SIOP lesson planning template below, as both an MS Word format and PDF.

siop-lesson-templateDownload

The MS Word version is blow:

siop-lesson-templateDownload