Hello again everyone! This
semester is just flying by! I’m staying as busy as ever and am continuing my
pre-student teaching at my school and working closely with my CT on classroom
strategies, lesson plans, and other practices. She has been working with me by
telling me how she has her classroom set up and her teaching style. Also, I
have been able to teach with her, and at times by myself. I must say, I am becoming
more and more at ease with my students when I am by myself. I have found that
the more I teach, the more it becomes second nature to me.
My CT has told me
something that made me realize what this whole student observations are meant
for. My last three semesters were not only to show me different teaching stiles,
but to see what kind of classroom I will want have, and what sort of teaching
strategies I will want to implement. I was told by CT that every teacher has a
different teaching style, and that the observation is for helping me get a
better idea of how I want to teach, and how I want my classroom to be laid out,
and what sort of technologies and what not I want to use in my lessons.
Now to help me this
semester, I have taken up writing in a journal whenever I get a good idea I
think would be a good lesson. Last semester, my CT told me to do this, as it is
what he does, and he is a great teacher, and I want to mirror many of his
lessons in the future. So far this semester I have been writing a lot in my
journal with my new CT’s lessons. Many of the lessons are great, and I have
some ideas to expand on them if I teach a class that is longer than the fifty
minutes. In our Bomer text, we have been reading about using literacy to manage
strategies, and the other day in class we had a debate on how each one of us
uses literacy strategies in our own way. Bomer writes “Writers need a way of
capturing thoughts, information, and plans, and the writers notebook is a
useful tool for those purposes.” (Bomer 64) This passage spoke to me as I have
been writing ideas for lessons in a notebook since last semester. My idea is
that if I think I have a good idea for a lesson, I will share it with my colleagues
and see if they have any ideas that could possibly make it a better lesson.
Also, I have been
discussing with my CT plans for my unit plan and lessons. Since the students
are on a tight schedule, I am doing my best to read ahead of their lessons, so
that I can teach them according to the big picture idea. This semester, my CT
and I are teaching the students about different types of character development.
Hopefully I will get to do my lesson plan on a secondary character from one of
our books that we have been reading. Since the unit plan is a large part of our
grade this semester, I have been setting aside an hour a day to help me prepare
for this project. Bomer writes “Writing demands a particular kind of energy and
sense of time, and that energy and space do not fell equally available at all
times in an individual’s daily life.” (Bomer 59) Since Bomer is referring to
time here, I have been using this hour for constructing and writing out ideas
for my lessons.
Since I don’t have a
finalized character or book yet, I have been using my daily hour to think up
lessons that can be used across all the books and multiple characters. I have
one lesson where I plan on having the students do a before and after of character
development of one of the characters that starts off as a villain, but becomes
a friend of the protagonist in the end. Hopefully this will allow students the
opportunity to see the character from another student’s perspective. For my
reflection and idea hour I go to my quiet place away from distractions. This
place is also known as my gun room, where there is a desk, and gun cabinets.
Bomer states “locations can be extremely important in the construction of
reading life.” (Bomer 55) Once again he is referring to writing so I am once
again writing my ideas down.
My question to you is,
what do you do to lesson plan? Do you need to be with people, or by yourself?
Well hope everyone has a fantastic week!
Bomer, Randy, Building Adolescent Literacy in Today’s
English Classrooms, 2011, Heinemann
Mr. Mann: I agree that keeping a teaching journal is a great idea! I have started this practice as well, and it seems to be very beneficial to me. There are so many moments during my student teaching when I think of a great lesson idea, but if I don't write it down, it will be lost! I am trying to write in my teaching journal every day after student teaching to reflect on what happened that day, what I can improve on, and to jot down any lesson ideas that come to mind throughout the class. I will admit I have not been consistent in this habit, especially when I have homework to do during that time slot, but I will continue to work toward this goal.
ReplyDeleteIn regards to your question about lesson planning, my planning system isreally varied. Generally, I prefer to plan in a solitary environment, however this semester a lot of my planning has been done between classes, waiting for a class to begin, or in the middle of the night when I wake up with an idea! In my future teaching career, I plan to set aside a particular time during the day (a planning period or before or after the school day) to do my lesson planning alone in my classroom.
Mr. Mann,
ReplyDeleteIt’s good that you are taking our classroom text to heart and it sounds like you have a very supportive CT. Although I have found that capturing time to journal for any reason, as well as eating at speeds less than 30 mph and outside of my car, sleeping more than four hours per night, and any other activities that are not related to reading instructional text, writing papers, reading ahead for my students in their text, or completing other homework for my own classes has been virtually impossible, there are a few strategies that I use to maintain my own compilation of lesson recourses.
Some ways that I collect and organize my ideas for lesson plans are:
1. On those rare occasions that I have a little extra time, I enjoy researching lesson plan topics on the internet. Sometimes these topics lead me to photographs, interesting text, story ideas, and even pre-written lesson plans that I copy and paste in part or as a whole to a word document and save to a file on my computer. These ideas may be something that I plan to develop further or even add to an existing lesson plan that I am working on, but keeping them organized for future consideration is at least a start.
2. I too frequently take notes about lessons and activities that my CT teaches in my classroom during my placement experience, and I often ask her for resources and information about how she collected and organized her own ideas for these activities. Sometimes I will research topics that my CT has taught in class and find new information that I can discuss with her later and consider for my own use as well. I prefer not to handwrite anything, and feel more organized if I can bring my notes home and type them up to store on my hard drive. I now have a collection of ideas that spans the course of my time in the education program and plan to continue to add to this indefinitely.
Although I am not intentional about pleasure reading, I do follow Bomer’s guidelines regarding being intentional about place and time when sitting down to read. I have a specific place that is both comfortable and as quiet as possible at home and at school for intentional reading practices. Some of the routines that I did not mention in class are: checking social media and my school e-mail for a designated amount of time before I begin my homework. This puts my mind at ease and prevents me from feeling obligating to check anything while I am working. I do not leave these programs open on my computer and I do not return to them unless I am taking a designated break from work.