Lesson Planning Literature & Language Essay Research

Unless otherwise stated, answer in complete sentences, and be sure to use correct English, spelling, and grammar. Sources must be cited in APA format. Your response should be four (4) double‐spaced pages; refer to the “Format Requirementsʺ page for specific format requirements.
This assignment is comprised of three different parts that will show your learning of various course objectives from Lessons 1, 2, 3, and 4.
Part 1:
To practice lesson planning, create an age appropriate movement activity for early childhood-aged students. Your lesson plan should include learning objectives, objectives for students, objectives for teachers, materials, and a step-by-step guide on how to complete the activity. You will want to refer back to Lesson 7 to see an example of how to format and create your lesson plan and Lesson 5 for ideas and suggestions.
Part 2:
To practice interdisciplinary lesson planning, create an age appropriate activity for early childhood-aged students that integrate music into another core subject (reading, writing, mathematics, science, or social studies). Your lesson plan should include learning objectives, objectives for students, objectives for teachers, materials, and a step-by-step guide on how to complete the activity. You will want to refer back to Lesson 7 to see an example of how to format and create your lesson plan.
Part 3:
To practice interdisciplinary lesson planning, create an age appropriate activity for early childhood-aged students that integrates movement into another core subject, different from the one chosen in Part 2 above, (reading, writing, mathematics, science, or social studies). Your lesson plan should include learning objectives, objectives for students, objectives for teachers, materials, and a step-by-step guide on how to complete the activity. You will want to refer back to Lesson 7 to see an example of how to format and create your lesson plan.

Part 4:
To practice utilizing assessments, create one assessment or evaluation tool (authentic assessments, formative assessments, product assessments, process assessments), for one of the lesson plans that you created. You will want to refer back to Lesson 8 to see examples of how to utilize assessment tools.
Textbook
Gallagher, J., & Sayre, N. (2015).Movement
Lecture Notes
Welcome to Lesson 7! In this lesson we will examine how to integrate the various academic subject areas into a lesson based on themes. By utilizing themes, you are helping children build for transfer. This means that children discover math concepts are not only to be applied at math time, but are also important during science, social studies, and language arts. Themes allow the subject areas to be interwoven and connected. As you read, see if you can summarize the mind-body connections, point out factors that affect brain health, relate the relationships between academic performance, physical activity, exercise, fitness, and music to planning academic lessons, illustrate how music and movement are gateways for learning, and prepare a 10-minute physical activity along with music breaks for your students.
A child’s brain is like a sponge. It is ready to gather and apply new information from a range of sources. The child’s brain can recall previous knowledge and link this knowledge with new experiences, creating pathways of learning. However, the child’s brain has to be in the right environment and mind-set to be able to work as effectively as possible. It is easy to understand why a child who is lacking in sleep and is feeling anxious would not absorb or retain as much information as a child who is well rested and is feeling joyful. Much of what the brain is able to do is based on how well a child’s social and emotional needs are being met. As the teacher, you will want to make sure that your students’ needs are being met at school and at home. At school you will want to give students opportunities for physical activities that can help reduce stress and opportunities to build strong, positive relationships with his or her peers. One of my favorite activities to help decrease social and emotional anxiety and negativity is to have my students participate in a very quick brain break. You can use any resonating sound. I use a small chime, and as the students hear the sound, he or she takes a few deep breaths in through the nose and out through the mouth with the eyes closed. As the child is concentrating on the breath it allows the amygdala, or emotional part of the brain, to relax. The process is very simple but has huge results in changing a student’s mind-set. Meeting a student’s needs at home is much more difficult. However, you can participate in home visits and educate parents on strategies that will allow his or her child’s brainpower to be used at full capacity. Speaking of utilizing the brain to its full capacity leads me to the idea of using music and movement across the curriculum.
There are so many benefits to implementing an interdisciplinary curriculum theme or unit. Combining music with a literacy lesson increases a child’s phoneme awareness, which sets up the foundation for learning how to read. Music helps develop visual tracking and focus, which can be used to help students track when reading individual letters, words, or sentences. I love to have my students, the majority of whom are second language learners, use movement and sound to aid in remembering difficult academic vocabulary in the subjects of science and social studies. If you are going to design your own theme unit, I would suggest you get together with one or two other people to form group collaboration. After all, two heads are better than one. Plus, it is more fun to plan with a group.
Our first-grade team would get together once a week to plan our themes for the next month. We would select a children’s storybook to represent the selected topic. Then, we divided the subject areas among us. One person would plan math and science lessons based on the chosen book. Another person created language arts and social studies lessons. The third person would create movement and music lessons. This plan ensured that these subjects were included in the curriculum and integrated with the other subjects. The fourth person would then combine all the lessons into a packet and distribute the packets to all the teachers who participated in the collaboration. Not only did we have fun creating these lessons and bouncing ideas off each other, but we also saved a great deal of time in sharing the workload. I always looked forward to these sessions and couldn’t wait to try these lessons in the classroom. In my opinion, working and collaborating with experienced master teachers support teachers who are new to the field.
By incorporating a main theme into all of the other subjects, students will be given the opportunity to have an ample amount of exposure to a range of concepts and skills from a variety of subjects instead of just one. This in turn will help them all to fully comprehend and understand the theme as it relates to other subjects. Hopefully you will have the opportunity to teach using thematic units at some point in your career. Even if you aren’t specifically teaching a thematic unit, look for ways to incorporate your science and social studies into the other subjects. Children’s literature is a great avenue for doing this. Music and movement also are great ways to incorporate thematic ideas across curriculum. Music can be used to fill any extra time. For example, if you have an extra ten minutes before lunch, the children can practice singing a multiplication song from his or her fact table (think about singing the seven times facts to the “Happy Birthday” tune), or using sounds and movement to help him or her remember tricky science vocabulary (think of forming your hands into the shape of a volcano, while making exploding noises). Let your imagination run wild and create things that will intrigue your students to participate and learn even in the extra minutes of the day. Remember teaching and learning should be FUN! However, you will want to be mindful that when planning an interdisciplinary theme that you are using state and national standards to guide your activities.
The rigor and content of a school day can become very overwhelming not only for the teacher, but also for the students as well. It is important to break up the day with quick 10-minute breaks that involve music or movement. It is easy to understand that a child can lose concentration after staying seated for more than a couple of hours. In order to motivate and reenergize your students, you can implement a few different activities that won’t draw too much attention from the learning of the day. Active Academics is a strategy that uses physical movements when learning concepts. For example, when teaching numbers and counting, you can shout out a number and have students jump or hop that number of times. This can be modified for older students when teaching addition. You can give students an addition equation and have them jump the number of times for the answer. You will notice when you implement these strategies that you will have more active engagement from your students.
With the end of this lesson we are moving full steam ahead. If you find that you are losing concentration, have yourself participate in a brain break to get you back on track!
Grading Rubric
Please refer to the rubric on the next page for the grading criteria for this assignment.