Lesson Reflections

Lesson 1 Reflection:

1)      I noticed that my students had an understanding of the lesson content (comprehension questions) prior to our lesson. They didn’t however seem very experienced with it our familiar  The lesson accomplished solidifying the idea into the students and gave them a proper way to analyze their own thinking an generate questions.

The students I selected are relatively shy and quite compared to the rest of the class. Their participation in this lesson however was very good. All three girls shared their ideas and opinions openly within the group it didn't seem that anyone felt any hesitation. One girl in particular was very keen to talk about her ideas.

2)      The strength of the lesson was the limited amount of students in relation to the task at hand. When developing the ability to question a text and analyze one’s own thoughts it can be difficult in a large classroom setting. Students who are normally passive during class are given the opportunity to elaborate on their thoughts and ideas.

I think the limitation of the lesson was in the passages I had, two of them dealt with school related things and one about milk. I wish I had added more diversity to it (something I also forgot to do in my main lesson). I would rather have had one about school, one about milk and one about an animal or something more informational.

3)      I noticed that I really like working in smaller groups. I feel that I connect better to the students. I believe it makes them feel more comfortable when working in smaller groups and I really thrive when a student is open and feels comfortable. Something that I have know about myself but continues to show up in my teaching is that I can get off task with the students. Sometimes I caught myself talking to the students about casual things and not academics. This is good in small doses but I need to monitor it and make sure it doesn’t detract from what I am teaching.

Lesson 2 Reflection:

1)      In this second lesson I noticed that my students once again had a general understanding of the idea and skill ( retelling using big ideas) but lacked confidence and familiarity. I asked them to summarize a movie they saw recently and that seemed to help the process along. They understood that after reading something retelling requires you to take the big ideas away from the story. Conversely they had trouble deciphering some small ideas with big ones. For instance they thought to include minor descriptions of a character in the story as a part of their 3-4 sentence retelling. They were able to get the big ideas down which was the lesson objective.

They also worked well when we had a discussion about the big ideas. We all read a passage aloud and discussed the big ideas and they were able to generate concise big ideas.

2)        I think the strength of this lesson was being able to correct a student’s thinking instantly if there was a problem or giving them praise right away when they did something right. This is something that teaching in a large classroom lacks. There is a lot of in-between time of doing your work and getting it checked. Having the students read along with me and then discussing it in a small group also seemed to help them grasp the story better than reading alone. They could generate as many ideas as they wanted to because of the small group size.

One of the major limitations was only being able to read a small passage. Drawing out big ideas and being able to summarize something isn't always going to be about a small story. I would have liked them to read a novel, a magazine article, a small passage, a poem to expand their ability into multiple forms of literature.

3)      After doing this lesson I learned that I may be a over encouraging. I think I need to find a better balance of saying an idea is right or wrong. It can confuse students if they get an answer from me that is in between praise and dismissal.

However I think my outgoing nature really helps in small groups because it makes the students feel comfortable I am open towards them and really encourages them to express themselves honestly. I feel though you can never be good enough at this, every different type of student needs to feel comfortable around their teacher.