The Teacher-in-Progress: A Statement of Prospect
A trend that emerged from observers’ comments on my Term III lessons was that I tend to write simple, teachable plans that address both my objectives and state standards. I would agree to the extent that I am considering each lesson individually, but when I look at a series of lessons (for example, thinking about planning a unit), I am not as confident in my ability to move students from one point of understanding to the next level. That is the most important area in which I see a need for professional growth – using assessment, especially informal, to drive lesson planning. In Term III, I wrote one lesson for each content area and taught it to a hand-picked group of four students. I didn’t have to follow up on the lesson or decide what to teach next, nor did I have to write the lesson based on what the students had shown themselves to be competent in or challenged by in class the previous day. I tend to see the vastness of what students need to learn, and I have difficultly narrowing my vision enough to plan a series of lessons. For instance, after assessing a student’s reading using a DRA, I am unsure of what to focus on next – the letter/sound associations that student missed? Chunks and specific decoding skills? Punctuation and reading with expression? Comprehension and retelling the story? And when I face a group of 18 students with individual strengths and weaknesses, how do I decide where to begin my instruction?
Having taught for several years already, much of what happens in the midst of a lesson feels natural to me. I have learned to be flexible, constantly monitoring both student engagement and student understanding and making on-the-fly changes to the lesson as needed. For this reason, though, I tend not to be very reflective about my practice as a teacher – I am comfortable teaching, and I usually accomplish my lesson objectives, but I need to learn to reflect even on lessons that went well so that I can continually improve my teaching.
Having taught for several years already, much of what happens in the midst of a lesson feels natural to me. I have learned to be flexible, constantly monitoring both student engagement and student understanding and making on-the-fly changes to the lesson as needed. For this reason, though, I tend not to be very reflective about my practice as a teacher – I am comfortable teaching, and I usually accomplish my lesson objectives, but I need to learn to reflect even on lessons that went well so that I can continually improve my teaching.
How the Teacher-in-Progress Affects the Lessons
My struggles with long-range planning would affect the two social studies lessons I have written before I even teach them. I can easily anticipate not knowing where in a curriculum to place the lessons and therefore not teaching them at the point in the students’ development when they would be most beneficial. I also don’t know, beyond what I have outlined in my rationale for Lesson Plan Two, how I would follow up on these lessons. The school year seems to me to be a series of separate units rather than one long trajectory of learning. If I were to teach these lessons and develop the rest of the unit, I would want to write a specific assessment checklist that would help me keep track of student learning and decide what to teach next.
My ability to be flexible and modify my plans in the middle of teaching will be a beneficial skill as I teach these lessons. Students might need more time than I have planned, or more and varied explanations and examples of point of view than I have written in to the lessons. Additionally, depending on the writing level of my students, I might decide to make activities interactive writing (students hold the pen) rather than shared writing (teacher holds the pen). Guided practice might become individual practice, or vice versa.
Knowing myself as a teacher, I am likely to extend each of these lesson plans to take more than one lesson period or even to extend them across days. Being flexible sometimes results in me adding more activities or conducting activities in a way that is better for student learning but takes more time – like replacing shared writing with interactive writing. I could also see myself deciding after lesson two to repeat the lesson with another fairy tale to give students extra practice with point of view and the Venn Diagram activity.
My ability to be flexible and modify my plans in the middle of teaching will be a beneficial skill as I teach these lessons. Students might need more time than I have planned, or more and varied explanations and examples of point of view than I have written in to the lessons. Additionally, depending on the writing level of my students, I might decide to make activities interactive writing (students hold the pen) rather than shared writing (teacher holds the pen). Guided practice might become individual practice, or vice versa.
Knowing myself as a teacher, I am likely to extend each of these lesson plans to take more than one lesson period or even to extend them across days. Being flexible sometimes results in me adding more activities or conducting activities in a way that is better for student learning but takes more time – like replacing shared writing with interactive writing. I could also see myself deciding after lesson two to repeat the lesson with another fairy tale to give students extra practice with point of view and the Venn Diagram activity.