Back to Back Lessons

Last Tuesday and Thursday, instead of a traditional class, all of us taught back to back 20 minute lessons based on our content. The idea was that we could teach students our content for one class and give students an exit card to assess their progress. Based on the exit cards, we would modify our lesson for the second day of lessons. This exercise was used to help us get used to teaching and planning lessons. I have linked the evidence of my lessons below, including my original plan, some of the exit cards, and my classmate and teacher feedback.

Lesson Evidence

The Performance Criterion that I believe this experience most closely matches is, Performance Criterion 7.2: Candidates plan instruction by drawing upon knowledge of learners to meet rigorous learning goals. By having my students complete exit tasks I was able to modify my next class to meet their needs. In my second lesson I had discussion questions for the student's to complete. I gave them the option of filling it out individually and writing down their answers, or reviewing it as a discussion. The students felt more comfortable reviewing it in a group. I could tell from our first class that the topic was something they were passionate about, and the students enjoyed having an open dialogue. Because I knew this, I was able to modify my lesson to fit their needs and the knowledge they had coming into the classroom.
  
    Overall this lesson was a very rewarding experience. It was the first time that I was able to teach 2 lessons back to back in my content area on a subject that I wanted to teach. It was also very helpful to get feedback from my colleagues and my teachers so I could see what areas I excelled in and what areas I still needed to work on. My final assessment for my students was an open discussion based on the topics we discussed. I really wanted my students to understand how bad traits in a leader (i.e. greed and selfishness) affect the government and decisions. I am proud to say that my students were able to understand the content and passed their assessment with flying colors.
  
   One thing I need to work on, is more clearly planning out the objectives for my class and communicating them to my students. I have the plan in my head of what I want my students to achieve but I am a very impulsive person and so easily get caught up in a good meaty discussion that I totally forget to mention the significance of the lesson, or why we are learning what we at learning. I also need to work on how often I say "guys." It is a really bad habit that I need to be more conscious of.
   
    Building a lesson plan in curriculum and learning how to have content, activities, and assessments that match the standards, helped me create a cohesive lesson that reflected the standard I wanted my students to meet. Literacy taught me how to modify my classroom and learning plan so the class as a whole could understand the content depending on their literacy ability. Which is one of the reasons why I opted for a multimedia presentation of the content instead of having a read aloud which I was originally planning on doing.
   
     This experience was really beneficial for me to gain more teaching experience and to find my style as a teacher. I am excited to see how I continue to grow as a teacher in future lessons.

Same Sun Here

A few weeks ago, the author of the book Same Sun Here visited our campus. Neela Vaswani, co-author of the book, came to talk about the book and her process of writing it. What was fascinating about Neela is that much like her character in the book, she is of Indian descent.
        
           In making the book, she talked about how organically it was made with her co-author Silas House. They each took their own characters that they came up with, and sent each other real letters in the mail as if they were real pen pals. This created the basis for the book, give or take some editing. Neela told us that when her publisher first read it she was surprised that there was no conflict between the two main characters Meena and River. They tried to stir things up a little, but overall the two characters were perfect friends.
  
         This book was overall a great book and I really enjoyed it. One thing I really enjoyed about meeting the author was being able to hear her perspective on how the book was made and how they integrate the book into schools, by doing various lessons and school wide activities centered around themes of the book. Overall this was a really great experience.