LES on Girls' Education

I learned a great deal from a school assignment in which my group and I developed a Learning Evaluation Situation (LES). My LES was an inquiry based unit intended for Grade 6 that required students to study the following question: Why should girls in developing and under developed countries have access to education? I really enjoyed analyzing this topic and developing activities for students to engage in. Our LES consisted of 4 main tasks which were, briefly: creation of a Storify, letter writing to Malala Yousafzai, poem and artistic creation, and speechwriting and delivery to theoretical UN panel. This is a project that I got so invested in because I truly believed in our lessons

and in the knowledge that they would help students discover. One of the aspects that was new to me was that of Storify, which is an online tool that I learned about for this LES. Essentially, it’s a website that allows users to pull information from multiple websites in order to create one central page regarding a topic. Here’s the model that one of my team members created, which we would use an an example to show the students: Girls Education Storify. Therefore, I learned how to use yet another online tool that would be really beneficial to students as well, which added on to my growth in Competency 8. Although I haven’t used this tool in the classroom, I saw how it can be integrated into my teaching in a way that allows students to self-direct their own learning and create a tool that they can refer to later as a way of remembering salient facts and information.

The lesson that I worked on in particular guided students in writing a letter to a major player in girls’ education, Malala Yousafzai. Malala is a truly inspirational person that can teach young students a lot about standing up for what you believe in and about the power of education. For this lesson, I also designed an assessment tool in the form of a rubric that I would technically use to evaluate my students’ letter. I w

ould provide students with this rubric ahead of time as a way of telling them what is expected of them. I designed several assessment tools for this LES, and it was probably one of the biggest areas that I developed in. This directly relates to Competency 5 because I worked a lot on evaluating student progress in different ways. In order to evaluate the entire LES, I worked on a rubric that looked at student work in all four tasks and I created a self-assessment tool that students would complete in order to reflect on their own learning. I often try to include some form of self-assessment because I believe that students can improve greatly if they are given a chance to analyze their progress, or even lack thereof. Click here to view my lesson on Malala, the final speechwriting lesson, as well as the assessment tools that correspond. To learn more about Malala, here’s the video I included in my lesson plan.

As I mentioned earlier, this LES was such good practice because I also worked towards developing several other competencies. For example, Competency 2 was touched upon because I have to model correct use of the language, especially because students will have to communicate their ideas through language in a letter. This also requires me to communicate my own ideas concisely using the proper vocabulary and correct syntax. By communicating effectively, my students will have a better chance of properly understanding what I am saying and of achieving the objectives I set for them. I will also be assessing their oral and written work, which requires me to actively pay attention and correct their errors. Upon reflection, I also feel like I worked on Competency 3 because I took into consideration the competencies and subject content specified in the program of study (the QEP), which then led me to select specific knowledge and activities in which to engage students. In order to help students develop skills in ELA competencies, I made sure to include activities that would specifically work on these abilities, such as reading and writing assignments. Finally, I worked on some features of Competency 4 by providing students with the resources they need to part in the activities, such as the I Am Malala book and the video on Malala. I will also encourage teamwork through the use of literature circles and writers workshops because students will be learning to use each other as resources.

Finally, here are some great resources that you can use to learn more about girls’ education and that can be given to students as well. UN Foundation Exposure, Because I Am a Girl, Room to Read, UNGEI, Care, Girl Effect, @MalalaFund, 60 Million Girls

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