Lesson 2
Lesson 2 did not go as I had expected. I thought the
students would be much more engaged and enjoy drawing pictures of the beginning,
middle, and end of the text, but they seemed bored. However, all of the
learning objectives were met. Both students included the main points that I included
in my lesson plan as evidence of meeting the objectives. However, Dalton said
that in the end, the main character’s friend had a toy he wanted, so I needed
to probe further and ask, “So what did they do?” He answered, “They traded.”
Both students included the detail about the mom not having enough money to buy
the boy a new toy, which I thought was interesting. I thought they would have
just said that the mom said no, because the detail about not having enough
money seems so small in relation to the amount of other details, although it is
a big idea of the story. Eliza did not include the boys trading in her drawing
of the end of the story, but she drew the main character holding a toy and
smiling, as if to indicate that he has a new toy. In her retelling of the story
however, she said that they boys traded toys in the end. The students were
definitely able to identify the big ideas of the story and summarize it without
skipping any important details, and they did not include mainly minor details
either. All the objectives were met, and I would say the next step would be
having the students practice clearly translating their ideas onto paper and draw
more descriptive drawings.
I think a weakness may have been that I was not clear enough
in my expectations. I could have told the students to draw very detailed
pictures of the beginning, middle, and end but then it might have became more
of a visualization task. However, the focus still would have been on the big
ideas. I think I could have asked the students several times in different
contexts what the big ideas were. I touched on it in the beginning when I told
them that this way a way of focusing on the important parts of the story, but
it would have been a good idea to talk about that concept throughout the lesson
to have them focus on the purpose of the activity. For example, I could have
asked them what the big ideas were in the beginning, the middle, and the end
instead of asking them to tell me what happened in the beginning, middle, and
end. Asking for the big ideas may have been useful for them in the future whenever
they are asked to think about big ideas of a text. I thought this activity
would be just right for the students, but like I said, it seemed too easy for
them. It would have been better for me to look at other assessment data from my
MT. Looking back, there may be other reasons why these students did not perform
well during my language arts lesson in terms of finding the big ideas. They may
not have felt very involved in the discussion or may have been distracted by
others. Maybe they did not understand the post-reading assignment as well as
the other students or did not know how to put their thoughts onto paper. It probably
takes more data than what I used to determine where a student stands. Maybe if I
were their teacher and I worked with them every day, I would have known whether
or not this task was the best one for them to practice. Also, I think I talked
a little too much during this lesson that it almost sounded like a discussion
rather than an individual activity. I think I should work on writing better
scripts for myself and stick more to them. I also need to relax and let the
students have think time rather than moving on to question after question if
they do not respond right away.
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