I met with Jason and Wynne at 5PM yesterday. We met to look over my lesson plan to see if
I could bring some class text into the lesson.
We came up with a way to use the Bricklayer’s Boy text and we decided
that I could go ahead and teach my first class.
Wynne helped me with the copies of my work sheets and
handouts. I went up to the class to post my lesson on the board as I have seen
Jason do. I posted under Grammar: Find
Verb and Subjects. Start Subject Verb Agreement, Handouts: Worksheet, take home
quiz, grammar in a nutshell. And then
the final activity was to work in groups and pick a sentence in Bricklayer’s
Boy and find subject and verbs.
Jason posted on the board: Homework, Math workbook up to
page 16, Bricklayer’s Boy for Wednesday, hand in math workbooks, grammar lesson
and quiz.
Jason started the class with my lesson, and then Jason
stopped me before I was finished with the first lesson as he needed time to
give his quiz. Jason thought that I
threw too much information at the class.
Upon reviewing my 2 lesson plans, I realized that I probably had about a
month of lessons in the 2 lessons. We
resolved that lesson 2 would be lesson 3 and that I would write another lesson
plan for next week that would be about groups using the Bricklayer’s Boy as the
text from which we perform grammar exercises that I have talked about in the
first lesson. I am worried about this,
because we are in a level of grammar that I am uncomfortable teaching.
I thought I had created a lesson plan that was clear and
easy to follow. It was easy to follow,
but grammar is not a clear process. I
was trying to stay as basic and simple with the subject matter to explain
grammar rules. The amount of rules that
I discussed was too much and negated any simplicity that I might have brought
to the process. Also, I would not say
that grammar is my area of expertise and this added to any confusion. I did not feel confident in the subject
matter.
I did feel comfortable teaching. I will be great at this once I iron out the
teaching kinks, such as lesson pacing, and find a subject matter that I am
comfortable with. I realize that
practicing teaching is important and that good teachers are understated in
their product delivery; the product being the information conveyed on a topic
to a group of people so that they are able perform using this new knowledge. Good teachers seem to softly coax
understanding. I see Jason do this over
and over again.
After I finished my lesson, Jason had the class take a break
and then handed out the open note quiz which took the rest of the class. The quiz was no joke. It focused on their new summarization skills
and their math skills including division.
Jason gently brought the knowledge in the class and yet there was
nothing gentle about the quiz.
I spent the rest of the class redesigning my 2nd
lesson.
I think you've probably noticed that Jason isolates discrete skills that students practice and return to many times before achieving mastery. Even though you attend class only once each week, you may see students working on similar topics and skills over several weeks. This is not an effort to simplify the classwork, but rather an acknowledgement of the fact that skills development takes time, and students need multiple experiences with the same information and content to develop deep understanding.
ReplyDeleteWith the grammar activity you introduced, you had a lot of information to frontload to students. This can be overwhelming, and confusing, and it seems like that was at least partly your experience in the class session. That experience is an important first step in teaching and you seem to have drawn out some important learning from the class:
1) Students need time to understand new information
2) Too many concepts or rules at once may be overwhelming
3) pacing and organization is important for a successful class.
To review the materials you introduced last time you taught, you could consider the following techniques:
Provide students with several sample sentences from a text they have read and ask them to explain the work that certain words you underline do in the sentence.
Provide students a reading with some of the words missing (you retype it and edit them out), and give them a word bank of subjects and verbs to fill in, and ask them to explain why they made the choices they did.
Post a few complete and incomplete sentences on the board, and ask students to explain which sentences are complete and why. Then, ask them to make some rules for what makes a complete sentence.
You could try all or some of these ideas for your next lesson. I would like to preview the materials again, either in person or by email.Also, check out that 26 steps book we lent you for other ideas.