Last Tuesday in class I presented a lesson on Langston Hughes' short story entitled "Thank You M'am. The lesson began with a free write asking "Have you ever been caught doing something you knew was wrong? How did the other person react? How did you feel? Did it cause you to change the way you acted or felt?" Students were given three minutes to respond to the question, and then shared some of their experiences. As students shared, I wrote some of their responses on the board, specifically those words that would related to the plot of the short story.
Due to the limited time, I had to "fast foward" and present the comprehension strategy before the class had read the story. The strategy I showed was a graphic organizer called PAST intended to group information about a character or person. PAST stands for Physical Characteristic, Actions, Sayings, and Thoughts/Feelings. Students are supposed to find examples in the text that describe the character and organize these examples into the four categories.
In preparing for this lesson, I wanted to find a text that was short and focused on character development, rather than action. "Thank You M'am" has only two characters, is often used in Common Core, and the reading difficultly seemed appropriate for this level 3 English Learners. I think the strategy worked well with this story, and students can see the various ways in which an author may describe a character.
If I was to present this lesson again in a condensed format, I would choose a somewhat shorter text so there would be time for the class to read before using the graphic organizer. I would also spend less time with the free write and more time explaining and modeling the use of PAST. However, these critiques would probably not apply if I had a normal class time to present this lesson.
Overall, I think the lesson went well, since the strategy is easy to use, and it can be adapted to different contexts. Previously, I have used this organizer to generate information about a person in the students' lives, and it could also be used about an important person in a given field, like science or history. In the end, I hope my classmates understand more about the needs of English Learners in class and simple strategies they can use to support these students in their classes.
