SIOP and Madeline Hunter

Being a teacher, and setting up your class to be as productive as it possibly can be relates to the notion of how well planned is the class going to be. Is there going to be any dead spots, confusions, or even misunderstandings between the student and the teacher? Ultimately lesson planning is the essential fixer to all of the unwarranted questions that as a teacher you do not want to deal with on a daily basis. In lesson planning there is, in essence, multiple ways to lesson plan. Those ways are through SIOP, Madeline Hunter and sometimes UBD. All of these have its benefits on what it focuses on most to keep the students engaged in the classrooms teachings but we will focus on the aspects of SIOP and Madeline Hunter. In the SIOP lesson plan it has its strengths and weaknesses but for the most part the SIOP is more dedicated to a much diversified classroom, in which it contains ELL students in the classroom. SIOP stands for Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol. Even though SIOP is designated more to those students who are learning English as a Second Language (ESL), SIOP is still based on teaching the benefits of all students, not just those who are learning English as an additional language. (CAL, 2012)

In the SIOP lesson plan it includes the educational standards that should be clearly summed up in the content objectives and the learning objectives. , The content objectives in essence help the students make connections between real life scenarios and the actual learning material. The language objective is ultimately the way to enhance those ESL learners to become more acquainted through the use of oral learning methods, or handouts that would help advance the proficiency levels with their English Language. A disadvantage of this lesson plan is that it seems to favor those kids who are ELL’s. SIOP ultimately dedicates its lesson plan into 3 parts, preparation, instruction, and review and assessment. One of the key elements of a SIOP lesson is preparation. When a teacher is preparing for a lesson, the most important part is to clearly define and understand the content objectives (Echevarria, Short and Vogt 2003). While preparing the lesson the teacher should outline both the content and language objectives in a way that the activities or supplementary materials are being involved in the class are beneficial and can accompany the lesson.

Also, with preparing the lesson, the teacher should develop a sense of relevancy to allow the students to make connections with real life scenarios. This ultimately incorporates differentiated instruction and higher order thinking skills. Once the preparation is completed comes the instruction aspect of the lesson. The hardest part of the instruction especially for ELL’s, which is a disadvantage to general education students, is the notion of creating links of previous materials with the current material being taught. It is a good refreshment, but it wastes time in the classroom that could be well spent on more individual instruction with the students. In instruction the vocabulary or terminology should be presented at the beginning of the class, in which the students will consistently be bombarded with examples that reflect the terminology over the course of the class. Ultimately the instruction aspect is the area in which student engagement and motivation comes into play. “The teacher should engage learners throughout the lesson by asking a variety of questions concerning the topic” (Gottlieb, 2008) Engagement is a vital aspect in the SIOP because it can allow peer to peer teachings which can enhance those ELL’s in learning new ways to understand the learning material.

The last aspect of the SIOP model is review and assessment. The review and assessment is ultimately the way to let the teacher get a good gauge of how the students comprehend the learning material. This allows the teacher to individualize instruction to those ELL’s or other students that may need it, but predominantly to ELL’s. A way that the teacher can get the best gauge is from quizzes. According to Echevarria et al. states, “Competitive and individual quizzes are often issued at this stage to enable the teacher identify content mastery of learners together with the level of comprehension.” (Echevarria, 2003) This allows the teachers to become more acquainted in how their students learn and comprehend information. Ultimately it has a lot of advantages to the lesson plan but the disadvantages more or less revolve around the dedication of the lesson to ELL’s in the content and language objectives. The other lesson plan that is a part of many teachers’ lesson plans is Madeline Hunter or also known as EEI.

Madeline Hunter’s lesson plan is known as the way of direct instruction of essential elements. The lesson is broken down into seven different aspects, objectives, standards, anticipatory set, teaching, guided practice, closure and independent practice. Most of the time the lesson plan combines some of the aspects of the Madeline Hunter; however, these are the 7 main objectives. The first step of it is preparing the objectives that will be taught to the class. Having objectives that are clear, coincide with the learning material, and are able to be understood by the students are essential to starting the lesson plan. One item that seems to play a substantial role in Madeline Hunter compared to SIOP is the standards hold the students to accountable to the expectations of the class due to the standards that are set from the teacher in preparing for the class. The next aspect is the anticipatory set which I believe is the most invigorating part to the lesson because it grabs the student’s attention, by bringing relevancy and real life scenarios to the students.

This brings the students full circle into extending the learning material from the classroom to society or the outside world. Next up is the teaching aspect which focuses on the input (lecture), modeling (application), check for understanding, and lastly the questioning strategies. The teaching aspect is the student engagement and motivation aspect because it allows the students to develop an understanding of the material through the input of the lesson, make a connection of the material through the modeling, check for understanding through examples, and questioning strategies is done by stimulating higher order critical thinking skills that would stimulate discussion in the classroom. Next up is guided practice which involves students to demonstrate to the teacher the understanding of the material through activities or exercises. The last two aspects coincide like stated above which are independent practice and closure. Independent practice allows the students to elaborate on the learning material further individually.

This would than allow the teacher to use a closure method with the students which allows them to ask questions that may not be fully understood to be elaborated on further before their independent instruction. Ultimately these two lesson plans of SIOP and Madeline Hunter are very thorough in what they accomplish for an individual class. However they both have advantages and disadvantages. Though the advantages seem very similar in what they accomplish, but the disadvantages deal with who (Students) the lesson plan favors or doesn’t favor. The SIOP lesson plan more or less is a positive enforcer for ELL’s, when the Madeline Hunter lesson plan model is not particularly well suited for use with gifted students because the gifted students become overly bored when it is not challenging enough for them and repeated patterns occur. (,2012) As you can see they are very different and try to keep all students further engaged in the lesson.

References

CAL. (2012). Cal center for applied linguistics. Retrieved from http://www.cal.org/siop/about/index.html Echevarria, J., Short, D. and Vogt, M. (2003), Making content comprehensible for English learners: the SIOP model. Allyn and Bacon. Inc

Gottlieb, M. (2006), Assessing English Language Learners: Bridges from Language Proficiency to Academic Achievement, Corwin Press, Inc. (Chapter 9).

Owen-Wilson, L. (n.d.). The hunter model or drill that skill. Retrieved from http://www4.uwsp.edu/education/lwilson/lessons/hunter/huntindex.htm