Important Tips on Viewing the Clips

Focus of the Clips

The video clips reflect three areas of emphasis: 1) building students’ prior knowledge, 2) promoting and supporting students’ independence, and 3) modeling comprehension strategies. More detail about each area is provided below:

Building Students’ Prior Knowledge—

• Establishing a foundation or context for the lesson aimed at enhancing students’ learning.
• Making connections to students’ experiences and interests.
• Making direct linkages to previous academic experiences, strategy lessons, instructional materials, etc.
• Drawing parallels between the content and students’ cultural backgrounds and everyday lives.
• Using interactive activities to gauge students’ understanding.

Promoting and Supporting Students’ Independence—

• Providing support for students based on the needs of the learners, the goals of the activity, and the complexity of the tasks. Scaffolding may include direct teacher assistance, provided to small groups or individual students, or the use of customized instructional materials.
• Monitoring students’ progress and providing tools for students to monitor their own progress.
• Creating classroom structures and practices that support students and provide the tools students need to be independent learners.
• Using student-led small groups and pairs to enhance learning.

Modeling Comprehension Strategies—

• Showing students how to read and understand complex texts and how to effectively demonstrate their comprehension. Explicit/direct instruction may be shown through explanation, guided practice, demonstration, or think aloud.
• Showing students how to evaluate their understanding of what they just read.

How the Clips Are Divided

Each video clip is divided into two or three segments. These segments are based on natural breaks in the instructional process.

Generally speaking, the first segment shows how the teacher tries to create an atmosphere for learning by:

• Introducing the learning objectives of a lesson and explaining the agenda for that class period
• Explaining key concepts and their relationship to the academic standards incorporated in a lesson
• Engaging students in the lesson from the beginning through teacher-student interaction or pre-learning primers
• Introducing upcoming group work or student presentations and how these activities are academically and contextually meaningful
• Providing clear instructions on how to implement an activity and assuring student comprehension of what to do next

The second segment (and third, as applicable) shows how the teacher tries to reinforce student learning by:

• Requiring students to actively demonstrate or generate knowledge through thought and action
• Utilizing diverse and creative activities that require group interaction, advanced planning, and critical thinking/discussion
• Encouraging students to make their own choices about what they learn and how best to express their understanding of content
• Summarizing (or having students summarize) the “teachable moments” and main ideas of a lesson

Video Supplements and Use for Professional Development

The ultimate purpose of the Project AdLIT video clips is to open a dialogue among educators about:

1. How to promote literacy across content areas,
2. What literacy in a content area means in relation to both academic standards and the contextualized environment of a particular classroom or school setting, and
3. How best to engage students in the learning process while meeting required curricular objectives.

The teachers in the video clips allowed their lessons to be publicly shared so that educators in professional development settings could use real-world clips as self-reflective exercises for group observation and discussion, with the opportunity to personally inquire and explore:

• “What techniques did the teacher in the clip use to prepare for the lesson and to engage the students?”
• “Which of these techniques might work for the students I teach, and which might not?”
• “How would I adapt the techniques I observed for my own instructional practice?”
• “How could these techniques be adapted to other content areas, classrooms, and/or school environments?”

To assist with use for professional development, each video clip has a companion viewing guide. On each video clip page where a clip is played, the viewing guide is marked by an icon.

The viewing guide contains questions to consider for each segment of a clip (i.e., for each part of an instructional session). These prompts are designed to explore the literacy and engagement practices presented in the segments and how those techniques can be customized and applied to other content areas across the curriculum. Note that they are not meant to serve as a basis for teacher evaluation, but rather, as catalysts for discussion on instructional decision-making and what constitutes an engaging, standards-based literacy lesson.

In addition to the viewing guides, we encourage the use of Discussion Questions for Video Viewing and the Video Recording Sheet. These two supplements, along with the viewing guides, should be used to allow for structured prompts in the viewing process as well as a means of recording responses and observations for personal reflection and group discussion.