My Final Blog for Teaching Lang. Arts

- Reflection of your lesson

The lesson my partner and I did on White Rabbit's Color Book I feel went fairly well. I was nervous to present my lesson because I didn't know what to expect especially with the behavior cards handed in class to my fellow classmates. I feel like teaching this lesson involving the behavior cards gave me a better feel of what to expect in a classroom from grades K-1. I also feel that the team teaching went well as well, there were times were my partner and I were a little off page from each other but with this practice it gives us a better feel of team teaching in a classroom as well. Overall, i enjoyed teaching the lesson and preparing my lesson.

- How did you (and your partner) prepare?

The way my partner and I prepared our lesson was a little difficult at first for me.However, we took every chance of talking and discussing our ideas of what we could do for our lesson plan and we each did our own lesson plan, compared what we like and didnt, and then wrote our final lesson plan using both of our ideas in the lesson. We each decided to assign ourselves specific tasks like finding the worksheets or providing the materials which I thought was fair since we were both trying to correspond both of our lesson plans together.

- Explain the objective and assessment measures of your lesson.

For our lesson we had many objectives that we wanted to students to be able to do. However, all of our objectives dealt with a reflection to the book. Since the book was about colors, what we wanted out of the whole lesson was the students would be able to name us the colors, recognize the colors, and spell the colors. For example after we read the book the students were to name the colors they saw. Another, the students were given a worksheet where the students had to spell the color on the worksheet and color it. The way the students recognized the color and showed it by saying the name of the color when the teacher pointed to a color. The way we decided to assess the students was at the end of the lesson students were to be able to recall the names of the colors that appeared in the book.

- Was your lesson plan executed exactly as it was written?

I feel that the lesson plan was shown some what they way we had written it. But overall, it still worked out.

- What was the most important thing I tried to teach your students?

The most important thing I tried to teach the students was to be able to spell and recognize the different colors that were shown in White Rabbit's Color Book.

- How do you think it went?

I feel that the lesson overall went better then i expected. I thought i was going to mess up and be a lot more nervous but i was able to keep my nerves calm and follow through the lesson plan strong.

- What did I learn from your students?

I learned that its important to always have something for the students to do no matter what. I saw that sometimes students were finished and didnt have nothing to do.

- What would you have done differently?

The one thing I would have done differently was applying the classroom rules. Although classroom rules were mentioned, it didnt really follow through the way I thought it was.

- How could you have made the lesson even more effective?

I think I would have had shown a power point that I mentioned on my unit lesson to have the students more involved and motivated.

- What do you think you need to improve or do differently?

I would most definitely improve on classroom rules and how to be stern to follow through with them

Reflection of Podcast

- How did you and your partner plan to use the podcast in your lesson.

The way my partner and I thought of using the book was for the students to first hear the teacher read the book and then listen to the podcast.

- Did you use it during the class lesson? Why or Why not?

We did not use the podcast in our lesson because we didn't think there was going to be enough time to introduce the podcast especially since we had a painting activity for the students to do.

- How did your students react to the podcast?

The students get a chance to show us any feedback since we did not use the podcast.

- What could you have done to infuse the podcast into the lesson more effectively?

I think if I did use the podcast, I would first read the book then have the students listen to the podcast and pause here and there during the podcast so that the students would be able to answer questions. For example, What color they think is going to appear in the next page? I feel like that could have been a some sort of a motivational set.

- Do you have any other ideas of how you would use podcasting in your lesson or future lesson?

I would have probably have shown the podcast with some some clip art so the students could be able to have a visual as well.

Reflection of other classmates' lessons

- Please write a short 2-3 paragraph reflection of your classmates' lessons. Include critques or any methods you learned when participating in these lessons.

I feel that everyone in the class did a great job showing their lesson plans. I saw many creative and fun ideas that I would probably use. I feel like having behavior cards did make things difficult for everyone to teach their lesson plan. However did give us a feel of what to prepare in the future. It was also great to see how some teachers reacted to the behavior cards.

A lesson plan that stood out to me would be the lesson plan on A Very Busy Spider. I thought the way it was shown was great. I liked how they had students be part of the book like sounding out the animal sounds and playing a mini game. I also like how they had some sort of token economy with the pizza pie and whoever completed it got a prize. That was a wonderful idea because it is most definitely a motivational set especially for younger kids where they are always trying to win a prize. What I learned observing everyones lessons were the different ways the teachers applied discipline and motivational sets. Also how behavior cards did effect some lesson plans. I really did learn a lot from everyone and enjoyed watching and participating.