SIOP Lesson Plan - Essay Example

To effectively teach this lesson the teach needs only to be conversant with the subject content and have an understanding of these best practices. This is why I have decided to include them in this essay. The first thing that a teacher should do when teaching this lesson is helping the students to build background knowledge on the subject in the lesson. Building background knowledge integrates new concepts in a lesson with previously taught concepts and thus promotes achievement of literacy (Cohen & Cowan, 2007).

The major best practice that a teacher can use to build this kind of knowledge, is reviewing previously taught concepts. In this case, the teacher should review the concepts taught in the topic on use of microscope to observe cell organelles. This would help the students to connect between the two lessons. According to Cohen & Cowan (2007, p. 183), “other best practices for building background knowledge are discussion, background generating activities, pre-questions and objective stating, and field trips”.

In the discussion practice, the teacher can discuss with the students about a cell and importance of plants to humans. They can also try to discuss how humans derive these benefits from plants. In the case of background generating activity, the teacher should have the students observe different parts of plant cells using a microscope. If the teacher can have the students state the questions they might have on plant cells and what they aim to understand by the end of the lesson, the students can build background knowledge about this lesson.

A short trip in which the students familiarize themselves with different plants can also be a best practice for building background knowledge. This lesson involves teaching of several words that the students might find difficult to comprehend. As a result, a teacher should find a way to instruct such words to enhance understanding. The best practice for vocabulary instruction is use of diagrams. In this practice, students are able to visualize the meaning of the words and therefore they can understand them much better.

The good thing with this kind of practice when used in teaching the lesson is that, all the difficult words in the lesson are represented using a diagram from the science book. Therefore, it is very easy to apply this best practice in this lesson to promote conceptual understanding of vocabularies found in the topic of plant cells. Comprehensible input is adjustments made by a teacher in his teaching technique to enhance students understanding. The adjustments are crucial in enhancing the students, ability to comprehend the lesson content.

Several best practices that a teacher could use when adjusting his teaching technique are available. Most common among these best practices include pausing frequently, paraphrasing and repeating ideas that look difficult, and use of gestures and body language (Wandberg & Rohwer, 2010). In teaching this lesson, a teacher should pause as often as possible to give students time to comprehend an idea. He should also paraphrase ideas from the way the science book represents them. This would make the ideas to be rather simpler to understand.

He should also be repeating ideas when necessary to ensure all students understand them. Gestures and body language would also be necessary especially to show the functions of a cell membrane and its characteristics. We will need to group