Back-to-Back Lessons

Lesson and hand outs

Mystery Excerpt Activity

Student and Teacher Feedback

My lesson was about poetry about time, and how it has changed over time. I allowed my students to select their own poem from the ones that I provided. Each poem had a short biography attached. Students then read over their poem and biography, and completed the formative assessment worksheet. In the following lesson, students would have been expected to do a close reading of their poem and write a short summary about what it was about. How to do a close reading would have been taught to them in the lesson as well. Students would be assessed on their summary after class, and would work further with their poem later in the unit.

 

In this lesson, I encompass the part of the Mission Statement Pillar that states:

"Our graduates are creative and integrative educators:

They are adept at both discipline-based and interdisciplinary teaching methods, using emerging technologies, social interaction, and imagination to support students’ achievement of rigorous academic standards. Understanding the connection between intellectual and emotional-social growth, they help their students gain self-knowledge and assume responsibility for their own learning."

This lesson is grounded in English, but knowledge about history is necessary in order to facilitate student learning on this topic. This lesson was grounded on group discussion with teacher guidance for students to collaborate on ideas that are new to them. As a class, they built off from each others imaginations in order to form their own beliefs. The answers were not given to them, but they were given the tools they needed in order to find the answers on their own. The depth in which they went was up to them. 

 I feel that in my lesson this portion of the pillar was met with the exception of integrating emerging technologies. Using technology more frequently is a tool that I hope to rely more heavily on in the future. If I had been able to teach both lessons back to back, I would have taken into account how much my group did well with group discussion. I formatted a "double lesson" with the intention that whatever was not finished in the first portion would carry onto the next lesson. This worked well as we ended right where I was expecting we would. The next lesson would have focused more heavily on teaching how to close read poetry, which I would have a more hands-on class, due to the learning styles of my group that I observed in the first lesson.

My worksheet in my first lesson was a formative assessment that would prepare my students for the close reading and summary writing that they would be working on in the following class. The worksheet itself would be a helpful tool for them to guide their thinking. The close reading and summary writing of the poem would be a summative assessment, that directly correlates with one of the standards for the unit.

I learned that the "mystery excerpt" activity that I added at the end of writing my lesson was one of the most impactful parts of the lesson for the students, because they could use their imaginations, and it worked as a bridge to connect their ideas with the knowledge they were about to gain. I realized that I do not know what to do with myself while my students are individually working, however, and this is something that I will have to figure out in the future. In the observation of instruction in both my literacy and curriculum courses, I felt especially comfortable with the class collaboration atmosphere that I was intending to implement in my mini-lessons.

Digital Teaching and Learning

In class, we created both a Technology Contract that our students would be expected to read, sign, and abide by, as well as a Letter to Parents that would explain the technology initiative at our school. 

In creating the contract, my content area group (English) and I searched online to find examples that other high schools have used. We found 2 particular documents that embodied what we believed to be most important. The first one went in depth on using digital citizenship, while the second was a poem that we also found fitting because of its in depth descriptions on the benefits and negatives of technology usage. 

In the letter to parents, we went into specific detail on why we are using technology, what we are using it for, and how it will benefit the students. Our group found it important to elaborate in all these areas so that parents could feel comfortable with their child's technology use in school, and understand how it can be such a useful tool for them. 

In creating both these documents, these PC's were met:

Performance Criterion 3.1: Candidates design learning environments that support individual learning marked by active engagement.

  Performance Criterion 3.2: Candidates design learning environments that support collaborative learning marked by positive social interaction.

PC 3.1 is met in these assignments because the learning environment that my group was intending on creating was to have a community where technology could be used to help the student thrive. Technology is already such an easy tool for youth to use today, and to utilize it in the classroom means that they can work independently in a way that has them actively engaged.

PC 3.2 is met in these assignments because in our groups hypothetical learning environment in how technology will be used in our classroom. In the letter that we sent to parents, applications and websites that will be utilized are stated. These apps/websites often are ones that allow students to collaborate with one another through technology, in a way that is fun and positive.

My biggest hope in using technology in my future classroom is that it is more of useful tool to facilitate learning than a distraction. I fear that if it becomes a distraction, there will be so many opportunities in my teaching where technology would have beneficial where instead it could not be because of the distractions that would inhibit my students. I think that after a few years of teaching, I will be able to recognize what tech activities will cause distraction, and find a way to actively facilitate the learning environment to ward those off. This is something that will take in class experience unfortunately I believe.