SIOP Teaching Case Study

Background Information

Mr. Brown is a fifth grade math teacher in the Phoenix Unified School District. His sheltered instruction classroom contains 15 ELL students. The students in this classroom are of varying English proficiency levels (EPLs). Ms. Garcia is Mr. Brown's teaching assistant in this classroom. The primary native language for Mr. Brown's classroom is Spanish. Ms. Garcia is a bilingual teacher who speaks Spanish and English. The lesson below is a one-hour math lesson on the topic of multiplicative comparisons.

SIOP Lesson Case Study

Mr. Brown enters his fifth grade math classroom on Monday morning to instruct the SIOP lesson which he has planned. All of his students are seated and paying attention as he opens his lesson. Mr. Brown displays the content and language objective on the board in a PowerPoint slide. He then asks, "Can anyone read our content objective for today?" Charlie responds to Mr. Brown's request by raising his hand and saying, "I can." Charlie then reads the lesson's content objective aloud stating, "Students will be able to solve multiplicative comparisons."

Next Mr. Brown points to the words multiplicative and comparisons contained within the PowerPoint content objective and ask students to repeat these terms chorally. Mr. Brown then asks another student, Jesse, to read the language objective to the class. Jesse responds by reading, "Students will be able to read, write, and solve multiplicative comparisons using a visual model." The teacher turns to his class and asks, "What does the word compare mean?" Maria raises her hand and after Mr. Brown calls her name to answer the proposed question, she says, "Compare means to talk about similar things." Affirming her answer by shaking his head yes, Mr. Brown says, "Yes, and we will talk about how that works in multiplication."

Mr. Brown has selected a picture book, How Full is Your Bucket?, to read to his class. This early childhood picture book depicts an elementary school student who receives drops in his personal bucket when good things happen to him. Mr. Brown creates a math problem centered on the story's theme and says to his class, "Felix realizes that by the end of reading class he had four times as many drops in his bucket as he had at breakfast. If he had five drops in his bucket at breakfast, how many drops were in his bucket at the end of reading class?" Angel, a student in class responded to Mr. Brown's question by saying, "Felix had 20 drops in his bucket because 5 x 4 = 20." The teacher explains to his class that they will now discuss this process in math class. Mr. Brown tells the class that multiplicative comparisons are those that we see in real life, just as Felix did with the drops in his bucket. He next asks students in groups of four in their cooperative groups to develop and write the definition of multiplicative comparisons in their math notebooks. The teacher does not proceed until each student has the correct definition of this term recorded in their individual notebooks.

Next Mr. Brown explains the concept, multiplicative comparisons, by stating that it shows a product through a comparison of factors. On the next Power Point slide Mr. Brown shows a picture of seven squares in five rows similar to the one below (Figure 1):

As Mr. Brown points to the squares moving across the top row he asks his students to count the number of squares aloud, and they say, "One, two, three, four, five, six, seven." Then he tells the class, there are five rows, let's count them, the class responds with, "One, two, three, four, five." Mr. Brown explains that 7 x 5 = 35 and 5 X 7 = 35. He states that here are exactly 35 squares in his picture!
The next step in the teaching process is for students to create their own diagrams to develop an understanding of multiplicative comparisons but first Mr. Brown models a problem solution on the white board. The math question on the white board reads, "What is three times as many as five?" Together, the class will build a diagram to find the answer. Mr. Brown states that they must draw vertical lines to represent the factors. Mr. Brown turns to his class and says "Draw a vertical line in the air." His class responds by doing so. Next Mr. Brown asks his students to draw a horizontal line in the air, checking for understanding, and the student do so. Finally, Mr. Brown says, "With your arms show me an intersection," and the class crosses their arms in front of their bodies. After checking for vocabulary understanding Mr. Brown returns to the lesson at hand. The class identifies 3 as the first factor and as Mr. Brown draws 3 vertical lines on the class white board, so too the students draw 3 vertical lines on their individual white boards.

Figure 2

Next Mr. Brown identifies the second factor as 5 and models adding 5 horizontal lines to the figure as his students to the same.

Details:

Teachers who use the SIOP Model effectively plan, write, and teach their lessons while connecting them to the standards and accommodat different ELP levels. After reading the "STOP Teaching Case Study," record each of the SLOP components and at least two features from ear component on the "STOP Teaching Model" worksheet.

In addition, record on your worksheet how the teacher used the following within this lesson:
1. Lesson Preparation: Content and language objectives, content concepts appropriate for age, supplementary materials used, adaptal content for all student proficiency levels, meaningful activities that integrate lesson concepts with language practice.

2. Building Background: Concepts linked to students' background experiences, links explicitly made between past learning and new co: key vocabulary emphasized.

3. Comprehensible Input: Speech appropriate for students' proficiency levels, clear explanation of academic tasks, and variety of tech make content concepts clear

4. Strategies: Ample opportunities for students to use learning strategies, scaffolding techniques consistently used, a variety of questii tasks the promote higher-order thinking.

5. Interaction: Frequent opportunities for interaction and discussion, grouping configurations support language and content objective: sufficient wait time for student responses, ample opportunity for students to clarify key concepts.

GCU style is not required, but solid academic writing is expected.