First, I think it's funny that you wrote that students "quickly take their seats." I was a little antsy at how slow they were, to be honest. Overall, I thought they were fine.
Just to make sure that we're both clear on how the lesson was to work: On Thursday, I received "notes" from students that were simply lines of "Fireflies" written down on paper with no description whatsoever. So, Friday's lesson was based on teaching them how to take notes (e.g., applying proper labels, writing necessary terms and explanations, etc.) and seeing if they could do significant work to understand "Charge of the Light Brigade" on their own. So, the idea of Monday's lesson was to clarify misunderstandings and to have them revisit their notes to see if they successfully completed the note-taking task.
I'm mostly responding to your notes here: while I'd love to teach the themes of the poem and things like that, as we discussed on the phone, I simply can't do it. The lack of comprehension by the students often prevents me from doing the more meaningful stuff. In an ideal world, the solution to this is to have lecture-type videos of the poetry lessons online so students can access them at home and receive the comprehension piece, then we can do the more meaningful aspects of poetry in class. Unfortunately, the demographics that we have at New Cumberland require teachers not to require anything that necessitates internet access. Similarly, in most cases, I can't have the students preview the poem at home and figure it out for homework because they simply won't do it. This could be an ideal situation for a reward system similar to Heather's -- if we give them something concrete to work towards, we might increase the positive pressures for students to do their homework. Again, the demographics are a bit of a problem with that idea, too, because of certain students' situations at home.
The problem that I have at the moment is our schedule from PSSAs is brutal as far as instruction. If we're lucky, we get a half hour with a class. If we're not, it's anywhere from 15-25 minutes (which is only half of a regular period). In other words, this poetry unit should have been done tomorrow, but instead it will go until Friday. The joys of scheduling for middle school <3
Regardless, I feel like the lesson went pretty well overall. I've had better and had worse, but I was happy with the way a large number of students performed on the assignment I gave them. Though I didn't want to take two days on that one poem, it was valuable experience for them.
Monday, April 15, 2013
Saturday, March 9, 2013
Observation Reflection #2
I think the big thing about this day for me was that I didn't realize it was an observation day; had I read the email more carefully, I would have planned something else and saved the vocab quiz for another day. Regardless, you directly observed a couple changes that I made: the students' seating and the length of the quiz. Some of the seating changes I made allowed me to spend the quiz time more productively. Focusing less on individual students' actions gave me more time to think about other things--exactly how I wanted to ask a question, what I planned to do tomorrow, etc. The other change was the length of the quiz. Students had been taking quite a bit of time to complete vocab quizzes--up to 25 or 30 minutes for that number of questions. On the Friday prior to this quiz, I informed students that they would have only 20 minutes to complete it. While most students completed the quiz in only 10-12 minutes, the scores did not suffer.
I admittedly was surprised by the lack of understanding when I told them what their homework would be. Part of that is likely due to me calling the questions for homework "discussion questions." They're used to that term meaning something entirely different from what I was asking them to do. I should have asked for "questions for group discussion" or something similar. That probably would have eliminated nearly all confusion. At the same time, creating an example for them and showing it on the board would have helped, too. I really didn't expect them to need that help, given the work they had been doing in their RRJs.
The review questions/activity--chapter 1-8 quiz questions and apostrophes--basically went as expected. One change I made for sixth period was I put the quiz questions on the SMARTBoard as well, along with 4 options from the quiz itself. That made it a little easier to get students to answer the questions. The apostrophe activity was more lively 6th period, too. They got into a heated debate about the correct answers. It was fun. One thing I didn't like about the activity is that I ran out of time for it. Had the explanation of the questions not taken so long each period, I would've been fine. (But it did.)
The activity that I wanted you to see, involving chapter 13 and the poem "Southern Heritage" by Jason Carney actually turned out to be one of my least successful and most frustrating lessons. It seemed to me that students were given a lot of scaffolding to get them to the ideas that I wanted them to get to, but they never got there on their own. Before showing the video, I told them that the day's lesson was about connecting the messages and ideas from the poem to both chapter 13 and the novel as a whole.
The very basic idea I wanted them to grasp was that each work, TKAM and "Southern Heritage," dealt with issues of racism passed down through family lines and with a man who wanted his daughter to be a better person than all of those who came before her. Even when Dave helped me make modifications to the lesson (having them number the guiding questions and then number the lines in the lyrics where they thought the questions applied, which was really more poetry analysis than I had intended for the lesson), it just didn't work. Somehow that connection was still lacking. Having done literally hours of work to create that lesson (just getting the lyrics right, even after copying them from a source online, took nearly a half hour), it was definitely the most frustrated I've felt. I really don't know how to make that lesson more effective right off the bat unless I turn it into a poetry analysis lesson and follow up the next day with the connection to chapter 13 and the novel. My intention was to use it as a springboard for discussion of 13.
I admittedly was surprised by the lack of understanding when I told them what their homework would be. Part of that is likely due to me calling the questions for homework "discussion questions." They're used to that term meaning something entirely different from what I was asking them to do. I should have asked for "questions for group discussion" or something similar. That probably would have eliminated nearly all confusion. At the same time, creating an example for them and showing it on the board would have helped, too. I really didn't expect them to need that help, given the work they had been doing in their RRJs.
The review questions/activity--chapter 1-8 quiz questions and apostrophes--basically went as expected. One change I made for sixth period was I put the quiz questions on the SMARTBoard as well, along with 4 options from the quiz itself. That made it a little easier to get students to answer the questions. The apostrophe activity was more lively 6th period, too. They got into a heated debate about the correct answers. It was fun. One thing I didn't like about the activity is that I ran out of time for it. Had the explanation of the questions not taken so long each period, I would've been fine. (But it did.)
The activity that I wanted you to see, involving chapter 13 and the poem "Southern Heritage" by Jason Carney actually turned out to be one of my least successful and most frustrating lessons. It seemed to me that students were given a lot of scaffolding to get them to the ideas that I wanted them to get to, but they never got there on their own. Before showing the video, I told them that the day's lesson was about connecting the messages and ideas from the poem to both chapter 13 and the novel as a whole.
The very basic idea I wanted them to grasp was that each work, TKAM and "Southern Heritage," dealt with issues of racism passed down through family lines and with a man who wanted his daughter to be a better person than all of those who came before her. Even when Dave helped me make modifications to the lesson (having them number the guiding questions and then number the lines in the lyrics where they thought the questions applied, which was really more poetry analysis than I had intended for the lesson), it just didn't work. Somehow that connection was still lacking. Having done literally hours of work to create that lesson (just getting the lyrics right, even after copying them from a source online, took nearly a half hour), it was definitely the most frustrated I've felt. I really don't know how to make that lesson more effective right off the bat unless I turn it into a poetry analysis lesson and follow up the next day with the connection to chapter 13 and the novel. My intention was to use it as a springboard for discussion of 13.
Sunday, February 24, 2013
Observation Reflection #1
Overall, I was pretty happy with my first day being observed. Though many students weren't quite as equipped as I had hoped for the day's discussion, I felt like it went well.
The class started off with a student from the previous period staying for an extra couple minutes, then a number of students who were absent came to me. Students are supposed to come during resource time in the morning, but they often end up not coming until class. Having multiple students come to me at the beginning of the period often throws me off slightly, because I don't expect them and I'm usually trying to get things in order to start the period.
I put students with their clock partners because I knew that asking questions like, "What are we missing from chapter 9?" when it had been read for Monday (it was Thursday at this point) would make students hesitant (or unable) to answer those questions on their own. Students' behavior tended to dictate how much time I gave them to discuss the questions I posed: the fewer groups who were actually working, the less time I gave. While you noted that a few students seemed to carry the group, I mentioned in our post-conference that a number of students who don't usually offer much participation or had been lagging recently did very well in the period. I was happy with that participation from them.
You also noted that a lot of the energy came from me instead of the class. As Dave mentioned, that's a technique that he has, in essence, challenged me to use. In 6th period, I didn't really need to use it. The class had its own energy, was participatory throughout discussion, and asked many of my questions for me. In other words, the same lesson worked very well later in the day. The only modification I made was walking around to partners to check progress on the questions that they were to discuss together.
Regarding the emphasis on points, students ask many questions regarding what assignments are worth and how they will be graded. We spend a lot of time answering questions like, "So wait, if I didn't write ________, do I still get all of the points or just half?" and "How much was that worth? Did you put the grades online yet?" The students respond to points, whether that's beneficial to them or not. I would love them to be interested in the learning itself, but some days that's simply not the case.
If I were to do this particular lesson again, the only thing I would change is the amount of time given to partners for discussion. In isolation, there was not much participation, but many students who didn't regularly offer input delivered it here. The following day, nearly every student in each period was called upon to share ideas. I do my best to get to everyone no less than every third day.
The class started off with a student from the previous period staying for an extra couple minutes, then a number of students who were absent came to me. Students are supposed to come during resource time in the morning, but they often end up not coming until class. Having multiple students come to me at the beginning of the period often throws me off slightly, because I don't expect them and I'm usually trying to get things in order to start the period.
I put students with their clock partners because I knew that asking questions like, "What are we missing from chapter 9?" when it had been read for Monday (it was Thursday at this point) would make students hesitant (or unable) to answer those questions on their own. Students' behavior tended to dictate how much time I gave them to discuss the questions I posed: the fewer groups who were actually working, the less time I gave. While you noted that a few students seemed to carry the group, I mentioned in our post-conference that a number of students who don't usually offer much participation or had been lagging recently did very well in the period. I was happy with that participation from them.
You also noted that a lot of the energy came from me instead of the class. As Dave mentioned, that's a technique that he has, in essence, challenged me to use. In 6th period, I didn't really need to use it. The class had its own energy, was participatory throughout discussion, and asked many of my questions for me. In other words, the same lesson worked very well later in the day. The only modification I made was walking around to partners to check progress on the questions that they were to discuss together.
Regarding the emphasis on points, students ask many questions regarding what assignments are worth and how they will be graded. We spend a lot of time answering questions like, "So wait, if I didn't write ________, do I still get all of the points or just half?" and "How much was that worth? Did you put the grades online yet?" The students respond to points, whether that's beneficial to them or not. I would love them to be interested in the learning itself, but some days that's simply not the case.
If I were to do this particular lesson again, the only thing I would change is the amount of time given to partners for discussion. In isolation, there was not much participation, but many students who didn't regularly offer input delivered it here. The following day, nearly every student in each period was called upon to share ideas. I do my best to get to everyone no less than every third day.
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