The strategies used in the instructional clip aimed to engage students and develop their reading comprehension skills. Specific strategies included differentiating readings by difficulty and having students teach sections to their peers. This supported academic development by focusing on main ideas, vocabulary, and presentation skills. Grouping students heterogeneously also supported social and emotional development. Language supports included defining key terms and having students explain concepts to develop understanding and vocabulary. Eliciting student thinking was done through "Do Now" questions, cold calls, and having students explain their reasoning. Opportunities to improve included modeling reading strategies and having students practice defining terms themselves through think-pair-shares.

1. TIE535 Instructional Design
AUSL Fall 2012
TPA Task 2: Instruction Commentary Template
1. In the instruction seen in the clip(s), describe strategies you used to engage
students in learning tasks to develop skills and strategies to comprehend or
compose text.
a. Cite examples of strategies aimed at engaging all your students and examples aimed
at engaging specific individuals or subgroups. If you described any of these fully in
the lesson plans or the planning commentary, just reference the relevant description.
One major strategy I used to engage specific individuals and subgroups was to
differentiate the reading that each group was responsible for. I used my students’
reading scores from their 8th grade NWEA (map) test to place them into groups. The
reading had seven different sections, so I first ranked the sections by difficulty. I
determined the difficulty based on the concepts that were in the sections as well as the
vocabulary that the students would be responsible for explaining to their peers. I also
divided the reading because I knew that it would be a challenge for all of my students
to sit and read the entire three pages in the same time frame during class. By
jigsawing the material, I knew that students would benefit because they were only
responsible for focusing on a small part of the text. I kept students responsible for all
of the material and engaged during other groups’ presentations by providing students
with a graphic organizer to fill in while the other groups presented.
When completing my planning commentary, I noticed that several of my
students have trouble finishing tasks so I also put them in groups with classmates
that I knew would keep them on task. The group assignment was open to
interpretation of how students presented the material following the set guidelines I
created of what to include on their visual. I let students determine what type of
presentation they wanted to do because I have a lot of students with different learning
styles. I knew that some students would want to present their material in a traditional
way, but I also knew that I would have students who wanted to present it in a creative
way through poetry, song, or a skit. In the video clips, it is apparent that students
chose to present their material in different ways.
b. How did these strategies reflect students’ academic or language development,
social/emotional development, or cultural and lived experiences?
These strategies implemented support students’ academic, language, and
social/emotional development in several ways. These strategies reflected students’
academic development because students were responsible for finding the main idea of
the text, identifying and defining key words, and determining a way to present that

2. would make the material easily understood by their peers. Identifying the main idea of
text as well as meaning of words (vocabulary) are skills that are part of the college
readiness standards for reading. The focus on meaning of words supports students’
language development because I am expanding their vocabulary. By incorporating
these skills into my lessons, I am providing opportunities for academic growth. Main
idea and meaning of words are skills that can be transferred between academic
subjects and are tested on the AUSL interims and ACT exam. Most importantly, these
skills are ones that my students will need to know how to do on their own to be ready
for college.
Social and emotional development was implemented in my lesson through the
intentional planning and structure of cooperative learning groups. I spent time to
create the cooperative learning groups in a way that would promote social
development especially in the sense of working with peers who students may not
typically interact with. I always emphasize that our class is a “team” and in our class
we all work together towards our objectives. I saw students flourish in the groups I
placed them in with other students that they may have never spoken to before. It was
a difficult task to divide students by reading levels and different social groups, but I
am glad that I did because they were productive in their groups. I used the planning
commentary to observe which students worked best with each other, and which
students were counterproductive to the learning of specific peers. I purposely
separated the students that I knew would hinder each other’s progress on the task.
2. Cite examples of language supports seen in the clip(s) to help your students
understand that content and/or participate in literacy discourse central to the
lesson.
a. How did these strategies reflect students’ varying language proficiencies andpromote
their language development?
In social studies, a lot of the vocabulary I use is unfamiliar to the students.
Throughout my video clips, I have provided several examples where my students or I
elaborated on specific language that students need to know. For example, in the first
clip of the “Do Now” I emphasize that by the end of the period, all students will be able
to define Latin America. One of the reading groups had the definition of Latin America
in their reading and when they presented it I had them emphasize it to the class (not
seen in video). In the video clip after the “Do Now”, I had students preview the map
before answering the questions. The Yucatan Peninsula was a place that was
inhabited by the Mayans which were a main aspect of the unit on Latin America we
were working on. I had students clarify that it was not just a peninsula, but had a
specific name that is important to their understanding of the content. During an
activity where students analyzed documents and answered questions, one of the
questions contained information about the source line which I had not previously
explained. As seen in the video, I had the student I cold called for that response share
with the class how to find the source line, and then I emphasized what the source line

3. was. We read and analyze primary and secondary source documents almost daily so it
was important that I highlighted that term. I have a lot of students in my class that
are English Language Learners so it is important that I always review vocabulary that
we use in class as well as content knowledge.
3. Describe strategies for eliciting student thinking and how your ongoing
responses further their learning. Cite examples from the clip(s).
Strategies I used to elicit student thinking were to preview the material, use a do now
question that addressed a concept students struggled with in previous days, and
making students explain their thinking. For the “Do Now”, students were asked to
answer the question “Why is Latin America called Latin America?” In the video, I cold
called a student and he gave me his response to the question. I also cold called two
other students, and then addressed that by the end of the class, students would be
experts on that question. By telling them that they would have the answer before they
left, they had their eyes and ears ready to identify that information in the lesson.
Another thing I did in the video clips was to have students explain their thinking. For
example, I cold called one student to give me his answer and then prompted him to
think further by explaining how he knew that answer since it was not in the reading.
He was able to explain that he found the information in a previous activity which
shows he was able to transfer that knowledge to this reading. I also provide evidence
of eliciting student thinking when the students are presenting their information and I
ask them to define their vocabulary word “descendants”. Although it was in their
reading, they did not have access to their reading while they were presenting and it
made them think about what the word meant and how to define it. I explicitly told
students in one of the video clips that I would ask them to provide clarification if they
left anything out of their presentation which guided them to deeply think about their
reading while they were in their groups. As I walked around, I saw that many students
underlined or circled information in their reading although I never told them to do so.
4. Reflection
a. Reflect on students’ learning of concepts and academic language as featured in the
video clip(s). Identify both successes and missed opportunities for monitoring all
students’ learning and for building their own understanding of skills and strategies for
comprehending and/or composing text.
One missed opportunity for vocabulary and content knowledge was when I had
students answer what the title of the peninsula in Mexico that the Mayans inhabited,
but never asked any students to clarify what a peninsula actually is. It has a specific
title I was looking for (Yucatan Peninsula), and because I was focused on them
identifying the specific name, I missed the opportunity for students to explain what a

4. peninsula actually is. I also established guidelines for the students in their reading
groups, but did not model how to pull information from the text. I assumed that
students would know how to dissect the information, but when students presented in
groups I found that some students missed the main ideas of their reading. Another
opportunity I missed for student learning and thinking was when I directly gave
students the five senses and how to implement them. Something such as identifying
five senses seems elementary, but instead of me listing them off to students I could
have had them identify them. Sometimes I find that I give students definitions and
examples without first having the students attempt to identify them on their own. I
have a variety of learners in my classroom, but I am confident that if given the
opportunity to think about content, concepts, and examples more frequently my
students would be successful in providing the answers.
b. If you could do it over, what might you have done to take advantage of missed
opportunities or to improve the learning of students with diverse learning needs
and characteristics?
If I had the opportunity to do this again, I would provide an opportunity for
students to think-pair-share to support the learning of my students with diverse
learning needs and characteristics. Students with diverse learning needs benefit from
think-pair-shares because they have the opportunity to pair up to communicate and
share ideas with their peers. I typically cold call students to ensure that I am giving all
students an opportunity to actively engage in class, but I could have just as easily cold
called students after a think-pair-share. Another thing I would do is model my reading
skills or do a think-aloud of how I read. A lot of my students are lower readers, and by
intentionally grouping them with similar level readers I found that the struggling
readers were all in the same group left to figure out how to identify the main ideas and
details from the reading that I was looking for. I would also spend more time on
specific definitions which is something that I sometimes rush over or do not return to.
I am thinking about implementing a vocabulary log for each unit with upcoming units
so that students can track the vocabulary and have more at-bats to use the
vocabulary in different contexts.