My First Lesson Plan (Chicora #3)

I have had experience teaching to students before I carried out teaching my own lesson plan. Before starting my masters in education classes I was teaching at an academic preschool. Every week the preschool would be taught a theme (pets, underwater animals, family, outer space, transportation, etc.) and I would create an art lesson for each theme, cardboard tube pets, paper plate fish, family tree, construction paper telescopes, paper airplanes, etc. Just simple crafts, no where as near as complicated as researching standards, and developing a whole lesson plan, materials, procedures, and assessment, but it did give me experience in working with children and creating different art activities they can do to aid in their understanding and enjoyment of a theme/subject matter.

When I began teaching in a public school the students were older and could grasp more concepts and could be provided with more complex tasks to complete. Designing a lesson plan for these learners would take more planning and a better knowledge of what they are capable of learning and accomplishing. After observing the classroom and working with the students along with simple teacher assistance tasks such as aiding in spelling, composition, and general classroom management, I began coming up with a few ideas of what I could teach these students. I decided that I would be teaching a writing assignment in response to a piece of literature, as that was what they were most familiar with in their current classroom curriculum structure. I choose a children's poetry book that was related to Thanksgiving, (it was 3 weeks prior to the holiday) "Its Thanksgiving" by Jack Prelutsky, which included poems about Thanksgiving meals. I would read the poems about all of the different kinds of foods that are normally served for Thanksgiving (as well as creating a vocabulary wall list of foods listed in the book for the students to reference in their writing for ideas as well as spelling), and then have them write what are their favorite foods to have for Thanksgiving.

The students enjoyed listening to the poems, and especially enjoyed creating the vocabulary wall (raising their hands and naming off all of the foods mentioned in the poems). When it was time for them to go back to their desks and write they were not too enthusiastic but still did so in a collected manner. Repeatedly they raised their hands to ask me to assist them in their spelling and this was the major teaching point of my lesson plan, not what the students would write, but if they used the vocabulary wall successfully to aide in their writing. I would remind the students to check the vocabulary wall first before asking for assistance and it worked quite well. Once the students became familiar with the idea of referring to the vocabulary wall whenever they need to spell a word they were unfamiliar with they began to enthusiastically write with more confidence. When all of the students finished with their writing they shared their writing about their favorite Thanksgiving food at their tables and we were able to hang their writings outside of the classroom to display every students hard work.

I found teaching this lesson plan very rewarding and enjoyable. Yes, there was work in researching the standards for the plan, designing and modifying the lesson plan to meet different learners needs, but even will all of the work involved, I really did enjoy every aspect to creating the lesson plan. Thinking of how the students would react and absorb each aspect of the plan was exciting even fun to think about choosing the book for the plan and seeing how each student would react differently form the book.

I learned a lot from my first formal lesson plan. Firstly, lessons cannot drag on or be focused on the same thing for too long, students will get bored and loose interest in the education and will begin to direct their attention to more disruptive outlets. Another thing that needs to be stressed is "sharing", the fact that I the teacher cannot be everywhere at once, and the students need realize that they will need to share my assistance with each other, so setting the classroom behavior expectations with the students is another thing that a teacher will need to consider as well when creating their plans. All in all I had a lot of fun with the plan and the students enjoyed the lesson as well and I am excited to make more plans in the future and teach them to eager learners.