I need some ideas to keep my 60 minute resource room going during my ELA time period - 8th grade. I run out of things to do and the students look disengaged. It doesn't help that they are well below grade level - probably 4th grade reading...anyway, any ideas or suggestions would be helpful. Thanks!
I observed a 5th/6th grade resource room once, they did 20 minutes of lecturing, 20 minutes independent practice (when they finished, independent reading), 20 minutes small group instruction.
5-10 Warm up/grammar/editing 5-10 Journal Writing Remainder of time is on the lesson - for example they are working on plot right now so we read a story discussed the plot and did a plot diagram, they gave examples of a story/movie with a plot summary and discussed the beginning middle and end but we used exposition/climax/resolution. I just think that the lesson part needs another piece to it or something but I'm not sure what.
I'd try to keep the whole group stuff down to 15 minutes. If they learned that way, they'd be in gen ed. I do mostly small group lessons in 6th/7th sped. Sometimes I change that to a partner activity or something that gets them talking/interacting. I love annotating, reader's theater, short media clips related to text, debate, interactive journaling, etc.
I found it odd too. The kids were usually tuned out by 10-15 minutes in, as she would pad the lessons to fit the 20 minutes.
I like both of these books for lesson ideas: http://www.heinemann.com/products/E04435.aspx http://www.heinemann.com/products/E03087.aspx They have high-interest reading passages (short, manageable) with a variety of strategies to use.
Yes 20 minutes for the lesson (Lecturing part) is a lot for almost any age group in school and no way would I do that with my resource group. I was looking for more activities to break up the remaining time and what else someone did during their ela time with their class.
https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Paragraph-of-the-Week-404094 I am not the seller. This is on my wish list. I think this would be beneficial to you.