Logan Flecker: Chapter 3

The authors provide a list of eight tips to let you know your lessons are appropriately paced.  Look at the list and reflect on your teaching for the past few days.  How many of these tips do you think apply to your classroom?  Describe which ones could be observed and give examples.

 

Every single tip can apply and should apply to every classroom. In the classroom that I am teaching in I could see all of these things happening when my cooperating teacher was conducting class, and I learned quickly to also be able to use these tips! I am in no means perfect with any single one of them. The one that I really need to work on is having a smooth transition from activity to activity within my lesson. There are times that I pause and go get materials from my desk. Instead, I should have them right with me. I have been working on this the past week, and this past week has been much better with transitions, however still the main thing that I need to work on. 

 

The students are most interested when I start with an activity, and do not give them what we will be learning about. I struggle sometimes with not letting them know what they will be learning about first, because I want them to get in the right mind set, but with starting lessons with activities (fun activities) it proves that the book is correct. Just start out with an activity to make the connection themselves, before even having to tell them. An example is, this past week I was teaching how to make an inference. I started out with a little "game." We wrote three things about ourselves on a piece of paper, then crinkled the paper  up. I separated the class in two equal groups and we through the paper and had a snowball fight for 7 seconds. (I set clear rules and boundaries and had a timer.) We then picked up the closest piece of paper and read aloud the three facts and guessed who the person was in the class. After doing this I asked how they were able to tell that was the person they thought it was. Why did they choose that person instead of a different? And so on. They were able to tell me that it's because there were clues and then they were able to put all of the clues together to find their person. 

 

I then had pictures on their desks and they were to look at the picture and create a little blurb about the picture through the person's view of who was in the picture. They did amazing with this!! After I asked why they thought that these people would feel that way, and so on. They were able to give examples. And after that activity I introduced the word inferring and related it to the two activities. They learned this concept better than any other that I have taught them. So the students were interested the whole time. The students understood, and I could tell this through their ability to give reasons of why they wrote what they wrote, or why they guessed the person they guessed. The time flew by! The students didn't look at the clock once. We did a little worksheet after even, and during that worksheet they were so engaged because they knew the material that they were doing this worksheet on. They enjoyed showing their knowledge. During this lesson, I was very enthusiastic! You have to be. Any time your teaching, you have to be, or the students won't be interested and it will fall apart. 

 

I guess with that one example I was able to answer most of these, because if you have one you have to have the others. If you are missing just one of these components, or tips, I think that you will be missing the others. Not always, but I would say most of the time if you are missing the enthusiasm as you teach, then you'll lack keeping the students interest, the voice that sounds enthusiastic, and the time surely wont fly by. Therefor, the students won't understand because they weren't interested. When you are enthusiastic, then they all fall in to place. Even if you're up there making a fool of yourself, your students will still be engaged!