Jon A Beck Term IV- Context

I currently student teach at the Andrew Jackson School in South Philadelphia. Ive been at this student teaching placement since August and Ive been working with the same classroom of students since I embarked upon this journey over five months ago. My class is extremely diverse with students identifying with various races including: African American, Chinese, Hispanic, Caucasian and Egyptian. These students bring in remarkably diverse funds of knowledge to the classroom day in and day out. The topic for my integrated unit has gone through various revisions and inherently, my intended direction has shifted a few times, but I intend to craft my integrated unit around environmentalism and ecology. There are a handful of factors that played into my decision regarding the topic I chose for the integrated unit and I intend to elaborate on the context of my proposed topic and how it relates to my particular students in this piece. Having been with my students for the whole school year, Ive had the remarkable opportunity to get to know my students interests, habits, and routines. It is clear to me that my students spend entirely too much time--when they are not in school-- using electronics. Be it videogames, cell phones, computers, or watching television, most students spend between 2 and 5 hours on electronics daily. I believe that it would be beneficial to expose my students to aspects of the community with an emphasis on opportunities to enjoy the outdoors. The area surrounding Jackson --Passyunk Squareis jam-packed with fascinating parks, gardens, and rich environments in which the students could utilize and benefit from.

One assignment that has shed a great light upon some of my students interests in environmentalism derived from a writing prompt that I had the students complete as part of a lesson on creative writing and figurative language. In this prompt, students essentially created their own I have a dream speech in which they identified things in their life, community, or school that they would advocate to change. About half of the students mentioned the cleanliness of their neighborhood or the environment. It is clear to me that many students in the class are interested in investigating the topic of environmentalism, and I plan to incorporate pollution into the second week of my unit. Lastly, the students in my class have a deep interest in science, and unfortunately, science is taught maybe for a total of 60 minutes every week. I taught a handful of science lessons at the beginning of the year and found the students to be remarkably engaged and excited about the content. I have continued teaching science, which has been great, but the time allotted to science instruction is extremely limited. I believe that infusing various elements of science throughout my topic of environmentalism will be captivating for the students and will allow them to explore topics in science that traditionally are given very little instructional time. In terms of infusing ecology and environmentalism into the integrated unit, I plan to structure my lessons in a very similar manner to my Classroom Mentors. We have seen massive gains in our students literacy skills, and getting our students on 7th grade reading and writing level by next year is our utmost priority. The students have thrived under this model where we employ shared reading, guiding reading, and regular writing prompts, and I look to continue this not only due to the resulting benchmark scores, but furthermore to keep a consistent routine for the students. I think it is important to build

upon this foundation of curricular experiences, and I look forward to utilizing fascinating non-fiction, informational, and narrative texts to integrate my theme. Throughout my topic, students will explore ways to engage with and advocate for not only their immediate environmentin the form of community and neighborhood-but they will be able to apply these essential questions on a more macro and large-scale level.