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Academic Language

Journal 3: Planning: Academic Language  

GoReact: This week is a required Video Week! 

  • Submit a video of 1 lesson where you implemented your literacy assignment
  • Self Reflect on your video by tagging and commenting on your video (consider your previous observation and highlight your strengths and areas of improvement)
  • Comment on your video where you show evidence of this week's concepts in relation to academic language: where did you use academic language, was it useful?, where did your students use academic language?, where do you teach them about the language function, syntax, discourse?, comment on your literacy task and the language supports you provided so students were successful. 
  • Submit the lesson plan associated with the video

 Literacy assignment : The article provides some effective examples! 

  • Language Function. Using information about your students’ language assets and needs, identify one language function essential for student learning within your central focus. Listed below are some sample language functions. You may choose one of these or another more appropriate to your learning segment. Examples: Analyze, Compare, Evaluate, Sequence, Signal, and Summarize) 

  • Identify a key learning task from your plans that provides students with opportunities to practice using the language function identified above. Identify the lesson in which the learning task occurs.

  • Additional Language Demands. Given the language function and learning task identified above, describe the following associated language demands (written or oral) students need to understand and/or use to successfully participate in the learning task: 

    • Vocabulary 

    • Plus at least one of the following: 

      • Syntax 

      • Discourse 

  • Language Supports. Refer to your lesson plans and instructional materials as needed in your response to the prompt below. Identify and describe the planned instructional supports (during and/or prior to the learning task) to help students understand, develop, and use the identified language demands (function, vocabulary, syntax, or discourse).

Watermark Weekly Journal:

Using the Weekly Journal Template, that is linked below, copy the Thinking, Daily, and Weekly Writing Prompts as given here in the template to complete your weekly journal.

When your journal is completed you should upload and submit to your supervisor in the Watermark Student Teaching Program Submission Work system on that end of week Saturday as required. 

  • Thinking Prompt:  Physical education teachers use a variety of instructional strategies to enhance learners’ deep understanding. One of these strategies is for students to use and understand academic language specific to physical education. According to the article attached “As a discipline, physical education has its own academic language, and students must be exposed to this language if they are going to understand the meanings and words that are used in sports and physical activity settings” (p.35). Read the article to ensure you understand the following language supports: Language demands, language function, vocabulary, syntax, and discourse. Prior to your week, ensure you develop a literacy assignment as part of your lesson plan (see above). Next review the toolkit for Academic Language where you can find many practical ideas on how you can have your students engage in using academic language. This assignment must be included in your lesson plan and the weekly reflection.

  • Required Weekly Reading Article: Highlighting edTPA Academic Language in Physical Education (see PDF below) / Toolkit for Academic Language

  • Daily Prompt: Each day, write down what you have done and learned from your experience. This week in particular explain how students (not the teacher!!) used academic language each day and provide two examples from your teaching in each entry.

  • Reflection on Feedback: Each time you add a new reflection, your supervisor wants to see you use their feedback and reflect more deeply. Look back on lasts Week's reflection and see how this week you can enhance your reflection.
  • Weekly Writing Prompt: The video of your lesson should provide evidence of academic language use. Explain and provide concrete examples for the extent to which your students were able to use or struggled to use the selected language function, vocabulary, AND syntax or discourse to develop content understandings.

  • Attach your Literacy Assignment: Copy and paste the prompts above - even better if you can show student work! 

  • Best Lesson Plan of the week: Upload your best lesson plan (with instructional materials/assessments) of the week for evaluation
Author: Cortland Physical Education Manager
Last modified: 3/3/2024 6:12 PM (EDT)