Culturally+Responsive+Teaching+Assignment

One of the most important aspects of teaching is making sure that your lessons are designed to reach the students in your classroom. One of the ways in which to do this is to adapt your lessons to your students’ backgrounds. Once thought of only in terms of race/ethnicity, culture is now being expanded to include socioeconomic status as well as taking into account individual backgrounds and abilities. Your job in this assignment is to design a lesson that is adapted for both the class and concept which you selected. Your group will post this lesson on the class WIKI and present it to the class. Your posting should include your lesson plan, the CRTA explanation form, and related materials. The templates for the both the lesson plan and the explanation form can be found below.


 * __Pesticide Resistance - Mrs. Palmer__** The purpose of this lesson is to introduce the concept of selective pressure to students via the application of pesticide resistance. The target audience are high school students from a rural, agricultural background. Most come from farming families or have close friends and relatives that farm.




 * Student Work:

Max Green, Nicole Martinelli, & Jill Dorbeck:** The purpose of this lesson is to introduce the concept of photosynthesis. This includes a discussion of the reactants and products, a silly skit and working on a lab performed by Bill Nye. The target audience is composed of high school students from an urban community who have some of the following issues: struggling with organizational skills, comprehension difficulties and weaknesses in writing and speaking.
 * Free, Clayton, and Funteas:** This is an introductory lesson to Mendelian Genetics. It is for a class that consists of 85% African Americans and 15% Latinos. Of the 27 students in the class, 2 are emotionally handicapped, 3 have a learning disability, and 1 MiMH student. Also, 2 of the 4 Latino students are in the ESL program. The students read between a second and third grade reading level. The activity starts with an engagement that focuses on the individual, and it includes culturally-appropriate images. After the students complete a My Traits Inventory, a class chart of results is created to increase the feeling of a ‘family unit’ for these students. Next, the students pair up and complete a simple Gummy Bear Genetics Activity that includes guided reading from the text book to introduce basic genetic terms and punnett squares.


 * Lauren Birkner, Katie Greune & Brandon Parrott:** This lesson introduces molecular genetics, particularly the concepts of mutations within DNA, in an engaging way for a classroom of rural Caucasian students, most of whom are living at or below poverty, are uninterested in school and value work over education. Other issues in this classroom include students with ADHD, reading comprehension issues, behavioral disorders and attendance problems due to a lack of motivation. This activity provides students with the opportunity to learn outside the box utilizing skills that they usually don't use in the classroom in a way that is motivating and relies less on formal education techniques that are currently not working for them.
 * Frank Savaglio & Kathy Rossetti:** This lesson on ecosystems is designed to be culturally responsive toward a Title 1 high school. The demographic of students include 60% female, 90% Latino, 2 white and 2 Vietnamese. Many of the students have a low academic language, low reading level and poor note-taking skills. Writing, listening and speaking need to be practiced in every lesson in order to integrate English skills into their science work. The lesson we have created provides an opportunity for students to study endangered Mexican Wildcats, while working in groups to help with their reading and note-taking skills.


 * Tim George, Sam Alderfer, Ashley Fleming:** This lesson on evolution is designed for a culturally responsive lesson where the students are a majority from a latino background and a few vietnamese students. All of the students are English as a second language students. The students will do all their activities in class due to their after school engagement in the work force. Since English vocabulary is not at grade level, the lesson is based on vocabulary building exercises. The follow up is making a cladogram and visually showing the vocabulary words. The students will increase their cladogram skill by doing a worksheet in class.


 * DeRew, Templin, Gunlock, Population Ecology:** This unit is for students from an urban setting with a low socioeconomic status and 6 students with some sort of special need. Also there is low motivation and the students feel that the eigth grade is the end of their school career.