Spring 2020

ECI 541 (601) Reading in Content Areas

Scaffolded Reading Experience (SRE) Project

Scaffolded Reading Experience (SRE) Project

NAME: Kimberly Harry

I. INTRODUCTION
A. Contextualize your SRE Plan
1. Target student(s) and context: The student for whom the Scaffolded Reading Experience
is being created for is a current third grade student in the Wake County Public School
System. This student is from Honduras and speaks Spanish at home and English at
school and with her peers. This child is an ELL student who receives services 5 days a
week from the ESL teacher. This student was retained in first grade due to difficulties in
reading development. She learns new information quickly and is especially strong in
math. Although the student needs support with decoding and automaticity in word
reading, she still has a very positive attitude toward school. However, she often
disconnects during reading lessons and then is unable to work independently due to her
lack of focus during the strategy lesson. This student will often “fake” read, in an effort
to avoid the reading assignment. For this SRE I chose the social studies topic
environmental literacy, specifically water pollution and access to water.
Our school has a large ELL population and we work as a team to support these
students and help them achieve success on grade level work. Our ESL teachers work
with homeroom teachers so that all of their lessons integrate the same content being
presented in the homeroom class. This creates a very inclusive environment and
increases confidence and engagement for our ELL students. Within our classroom,
expectations are high, and students are aware that we will all work on grade level
standards while reading complex texts. Frontloading is an important step in increasing
student participation in grade level assignments. Frontloading groups are flexible and
change often using data from teacher observation and formative assessments. The
teacher desk is a kidney table in which students are welcome to bring their work to at
any time to receive feedback or support. The combination of high expectations, and
easily accessible teacher support creates an inclusive and high achieving environment.
2. Text selection: The text used for the SRE is titled “ONE WELL: The story of Water on
Earth”. Due to the book being a very complex text this SRE will focus on reading and
deeply understanding only one page from the book. Page 24 of this book discusses water
pollution. I chose this section because in past years I have noticed that ELL students
have a hard time understanding the main ideas presented. I have observed that without
an understanding of the scientific process of the water cycle, and without an
understanding of some of the domain specific vocabulary words the author uses, it is
hard for the reader to understand the main ideas of the section.
3. The lexile level for One Well: The Story of Water on Earth is 960L. This book is
recommended for ages 8-12 years old. Due to the sentence length, vocabulary, and ideas
 presented in this book, this book could be used in upper elementary grades (3rd through
6th grade) with teacher support.
4. Reading purpose/objectives:
a) content objectives: The North Carolina social studies standard is: 3.G.1.3
Exemplify how people adapt to, change and protect the environment to meet
their needs. This topic is integrated within the daily reading lessons as part of a
knowledge based thematic unit. Therefore, the reading skills that are also
targeted during these lessons are using context clues to determine the meaning of
academic vocabulary and finding the main idea of an informational text.
b) language objectives: Students will add new learning from the text to a concept
map made with the teacher. Students will form an opinion and support their
reasoning with evidence from the text to participate in a collaborative reasoning
discussion with a small group.

B. Theoretical Rationale: Combining science, social studies, and literacy standards is important for
students because they begin to make connections and better understand how the world works.
Since I implement a knowledge-based reading curriculum, the daily reading lessons not only
focus on teaching students how to utilize reading strategies, but also how to combine their
knowledge from all subject areas to better understand their reading. This is motivating to
students because they have a natural curiosity about how the world works. However, there can
be many obstacles using a knowledge-based reading curriculum, such as learning new domain
specific vocabulary and students reading above grade level texts. The scaffolds used in this plan
are used for guiding students to develop and connect background knowledge so that they are
better able to visualize and connect with the complex text. To help frontload students with both
background knowledge and vocabulary I will use a concept map and visuals, such as diagrams,
to help students visualize the scientific processes, vocabulary words, and geography themes. I
will also read aloud and think aloud during the reading of the text so that the student’s decoding
issues do not interfere with her comprehension. After reading, we will reread the text together to
add to our concept map, so that she can practice reading fluently, since rereading text is an
important part in automatic word recognition and fluency development.

II. LESSON PLAN

A. Overview
Day 1 Pre-reading (BEFORE) Reading (DURING) Post-reading (AFTER)

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 ● Quick write: water
access and water
pollution
● Concept map-Water
Pollution

Day 2 Pre-reading (BEFORE) Reading (DURING) Post-reading (AFTER)

● Modeled think aloud

Day X Pre-reading (BEFORE) Reading (DURING) Post-reading (AFTER)

● Add to concept map

● Collaborative
Reasoning

B. Description: small group of students in need of vocabulary support

1. Pre-reading (Day 1)
a) Activity 1: Quick write about how students access water throughout their day,
and what they already know about water and pollution.
○ Goal of the activity: To activate prior knowledge
○ Rationale: Having the students make connections to their own lives helps
the students to understand how the information is relevant to them. By
asking the students to write about what they already know about water
and water pollution to process and organize their prior knowledge.
○ Procedure: The teacher will pose the first question (How do you access
water throughout your day?) to the students and the students will respond
by writing their answer in their journal. The teacher will think aloud
about how she accesses water throughout her day to help the students get
started. The teacher will provide a sentence starter for the students to use
as an option. The sentence starter will be written on the whiteboard and
will read “I access water by using ___________. I need water throughout
the day when I ______________.” Students will then share their response
in the small group. Next, the teacher will ask the students to complete a
quick write about what they already know about water and water
pollution, using words or pictures. The students will then talk about their
responses. (10 minutes)
b) Activity 2: Create concept map for water pollution
○ Goal of the activity: to activate prior knowledge and frontload students
with important vocabulary and concepts prior to reading in a small group.

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 ○ Rationale: For students to understand the impact of pollution created in
America on other countries students will need to have an understanding
of how water is recycled through the water cycle. Also, the text uses
words that are likely unfamiliar to ELL students in third grade. Using
pictures, visuals, diagrams, and cognates will help the students access the
main ideas of the text.
○ Procedure: The teacher will begin by creating a concept map with a small
group of students by writing the words “water pollution” in the center of
large chart paper. The teacher will ask students about what they already
know about water pollution. The teacher will guide students to adding
pollution to the map, and add types of pollution (litter, chemicals, cars).
The teacher will also guide students to think about where pollution comes
from such as, homes, farms, and factories. During this time the teacher
will add pictures and cognates to the concept map and introduce
vocabulary from the text: agriculture: visual picture of farms; cognate-
agricultura; industry: visual pictures of factories; cognate industria)
The teacher will then guide students to think about how pollution travels
through the water system by adding a diagram of the water system
labeled with vocabulary, while pointing out known word parts such as,
evaporates(vapor), groundwater(ground/water), condensation(condense),
and precipitation. The water cycle diagram will include pictures and
arrows so students understand how water molecules move throughout the
water cycle. Students will then act out the water cycle by using the
arrows on the diagram to guide their movement. The teacher will also
include a visual of a world map and ask the students to consider which
direction the water would travel to move from the United States to
Honduras, and from Honduras to Africa. The teacher will encourage
students to use hand gestures while naming while reviewing the cardinal
directions. (20 minutes)
2. Reading (Day 2) WHOLE GROUP
a) Activity 1: Think aloud focused on using context clues to figure out unknown
words and monitoring comprehension.
○ Goal of the activity: To model for students how to use context clues and
prior knowledge to infer the meaning of new words. Also, to model how
to reread and visualize when parts of the text seem confusing.
○ Rationale: In order for students to independently read complex text, an
important strategy they need to know, is how to stop to figure out the
meaning of unfamiliar vocabulary words by using known word parts,
context clues, or a dictionary. By modeling this process students will
learn how good readers tackle difficult text with new words. Another
important strategy students need to use is monitoring their

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 comprehension and knowing how to “fix up” their comprehension by
rereading, changing their rate of reading, and visualizing and connecting
to what they have read.
○ Procedure: The teacher will read aloud the text on page 24. As the teacher
reads sentences that involve unfamiliar vocabulary or a scientific process,
the teacher will pause and model how a good reader connects prior
knowledge to the information provided by the author to learn new things.
For example, after reading these sentences from the text: “As water
evaporates, minerals, chemicals, and dirt are left behind. The water vapor
that rises into the atmosphere is relatively clean.” Here the teacher would
connect this sentence to a science experiment the students conducted
previously in the school year when learning about matter and solutions.
The teacher will say aloud “Okay, so the text says that water evaporates,
well I know the root word “vapor” means water droplets, and on the
water cycle diagram the arrows point up for evaporation, so evaporate
might mean when water travels up as droplets of water.” The teacher
would continue by thinking aloud “The sentence also states that minerals,
chemicals, and dirt are left behind. This reminds me of when we were
trying to separate mixtures and solutions in science class. To separate the
salt solution we put the solution in a petri dish by the window, and after a
couple days, we noticed only the dried salt crystals were left in the petri
dish, the water had left, or evaporated. The text is telling me that this
evaporated water is clean because the dirt is left behind, just like the salt
was left behind in our science experiment. Stopping to reread, and
connect what I already know about a scientific process, helps me to better
understand what the author is explaining in the text. ” The teacher will
explicitly use metacognitive language to explain to students how her
thinking helps her to better understand a difficult text and encourage the
students to use these same strategies when reading independently. (20
minutes)

3. Post-reading (Day 3) WHOLE CLASS/SMALL GROUP DISCUSSIONS

a) Activity 1: add to concept map made during pre-reading
○ Goal of the activity: To reinforce and organize new learning
○ Rationale: After learning a lot of new facts about how human actions
create problems for naturally occurring scientific processes and the
effects of these actions to a global community, the students need a way to
organize the new information learned. By adding these new ideas to the
concept map students will continue to make connections to how the ideas
are connected.

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 ○ Procedure: The teacher will begin to add new ideas to the concept map
from the reading. The teacher will ask students to participate by asking
them how they are connected and having students volunteer to add to the
map. For example, the teacher will guide students to understand that the
pollution from homes, agriculture, and industry are human interactions
that are overloading the water cycle. Having students draw lines to
connect these ideas and adding new learning from the text will help the
students understand how human interactions impact the environment and
communities around the world.
b) Activity 2 (optional): Collaborative Reasoning -access to water
○ Goal of the activity: To help students to think critically about the new
information they have learned.
○ Rationale: When students develop opinions, they must think about why
they have those opinions. Therefore, rereading the text to determine their
feelings about a topic will encourage students to evaluate the information
presented. Discussing these topics in a small group with their English
proficient peers will help the students to further develop their thinking
before responding to the final question for collaborative reasoning.
○ Procedure: The teacher will distribute an opinionnaire and read aloud
each statement to the students. The opinionnaire will include the
following statements:
1. Homes should have unlimited access to landfills.
2. Police officers should be allowed to ticket people who litter.
3. Factories need to find better ways to make products that do not pollute
the earth.
4. Children do not need to worry about how much they throw away or
waste.
5.Reusing items or buying used items is important.
6. The ocean is a good place for garbage because we cannot see it.
7. If a person decides to litter it is their choice, it is not someone else's
problem.

The students will decide if they agree or disagree with each statement.
The student will underline a sentence in the text that supports why they
chose to agree or disagree with each statement. The teacher will then put
the students in small groups and have them use a Socratic Seminar
discussion format to discuss each statement on the opinionnaire. The
teacher will then ask the student to write a paragraph on an index card
explaining their answer to the following questions: “Are members of a
community responsible for pollution and waste?” Students will then
return to their small groups and share their responses; they will also be

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 encouraged to agree or disagree with statements made by their group
members.

III. REFLECTION: A strength of this SRE plan is that it helps students to make connections to prior
learning from multiple content areas. It also scaffolds students by building upon their first language and
using visuals and cognates to help connect their first language to new English vocabulary words. This
SRE plan does not utilize technology which could be helpful in helping students build more
background knowledge prior to reading the informational text. I predict students will enjoy sharing
their knowledge of how they access water throughout their day and exploring how often they use water
for daily activities. Students will need to have sustained concentration during the think-aloud which can
be difficult for all children, but especially students who must process a lot of information, such as
ELLs. It will be important for the teacher to pause and include students thinking during the think-aloud
to maintain their engagement. However, I also feel providing the collaborative reasoning question
before reading, would serve as a meaningful guiding question. The collaborative reasoning should be
engaging since many students at this age have strong feelings about protecting earth, animals, and the
future of the environment.