Final Blog

This posting should include:
 Reflection of your lesson
 How did you (and your partner) prepare?
 Explain the objective and assessment measures of your lesson
 Was your lesson plan executed exactly as it was written?
 What was the most important thing I tried to teach your students?
 How do you think it went?
 What did I learn from your students?
 What would you have done differently?
 How could you have made the lesson even more effective?
 What do you think you need to improve or do differently?

My lesson was on the “White Rabbit’s Color Book” and my partner was Marie. I think we did an excellent job preparing for our lesson. We got together to create the lesson plan and were able to work together without any complications and somehow incorporate all our ideas into the lesson plan. We both came up with fun activities, we made up a quiz consisting of the 5 critical questions we had already made up, and talked a lot about discipline. We even got to together the day before and did a actual walk through rehearsal of the whole lesson plan we had created. After agreeing, we both divided the work meaning -who was going to get what supplies, copies, etc., which I think made things a little easier and fair. I loved working with Marie and would definitely would love to work with her again. In my opinion the lesson plan was somewhat executed the way the lesson plan was written. I think everyone is nervous the day they have to present and that caused a huge change. The first half of our lesson plan in my opinion went great, everyone enjoyed making the bunny ear hats and were into the story while reading on the carpet. The second half did not go so great which was completely my fault, I was in charge of the copies of the papers and although they were already done, I somehow forgot them at home the morning of the presentation, I still feel horrible about it. Lucky for us, we had seated everyone in groups and someone had left 5 extra ‘KWL’ chart forms, I quickly grabbed those and made students work on them as groups. The most important objective being taught was for the children to learn their primary and secondary colors. I think the children picked up on it quickly because we kept going over and over the colors. I really liked that the children on their own then realized that the color of their head bands were the primary colors. During our lesson I noticed we had a lot of interruptions and because of children’s bad behavior or talking. From the students I learned that I must be just a little more firm, through the previous lesson plans presented by other classmates I observed that the students behaviors were just too wild for me so I saw it coming. I think I was a little more focused on getting through the lesson that I tried to ignore the bad behaviors. Next time I think I should be more relaxed about thing and make sure I have everything I need with me ahead of time.


Reflection of Podcast
How did you and your partner plan to use the podcast in your lesson?
My partner and I planned to use the pod cast in the lesson by playing it to read the story to the children.
Did you use it during the class lesson? Why or why not?
Yes the podcast was used during the lesson because it was incorporated during the beginning of the lesson. However in our original lesson plan we planned to use the pod cast twice, but because the few interruptions we had from students we decided to just read it aloud the second time.
How did your students react to the podcast?
The pod cast playing was a little low, but overall I think the book caught the attention of the children and kept them quit during the podcast.
How do you think it went?
I think the pod cast playing went really well. At first I didn’t really like it and had no idea how I would fit it in the lesson. It was actually great and I would definitely want to use pod casting for other lesson plan in the future.
What could you have done to infuse the podcast into the lesson more effectively?
I thing our pod cast was too low, so I would have defiantly would have liked to re-due this pod cast.
Do you have any other ideas of how you would use podcasting in your lesson or future lessons?
Another way I would use pod casting for my future lessons is I would have students pod cast their favorite story and then have a classmate pick a story and listen to it and do a book report on it.
Reflection of other classmates' lessons
-Please write a short 2-3 paragraph reflection of your classmates’ lessons.
-Include critiques or any methods you learned when participating in these lessons
When starting this assignment, I knew right away this would not be simple although considering for me this would not be the first time teaching a lesson. However it did ease off a little stress because this project allowed us to work with someone which meant for me, that I would get to view someone’s ideas. It was fun to see and hear other ideas that my partner had and what other classmates used which I can later on incorporate into my lesson plans. I noticed that everyone has different teaching styles and techniques. The hardest part, which was what most scared me, was the behavior cards of which many students may have in our future classrooms. And especially after the first group went, it only got me more nervous, however I think these behavior cards are necessary because these are things we all will experience in a real classroom. Lucky for me, my group went towards the end which gave me an advantage because I was able to prepare myself by observing my classmates and the evaluation of the professor. From this I learned how to deal with all the interruptions during the lesson and how to handle certain situations.I think all groups handled the behavior cards very well and all created good lesson. From this experience I have learned many new tactics such as: having one teacher teach and one walk around the classroom, keeping students active and participating through out your lesson is very important, and thinking like a child find fun ways to teach and educate children. One of the biggest things I learned from my classmates was the usage of discipline. I noticed that throughout the lessons students fed off of each other, which also happens in real life situations, after awhile everyone became comfortable with each other which caused even more of a bad behavior. Although no group had total control of all students I still think everyone did an amazing job handling the bad behavior. What I loved the most were the behavior charts that many groups had, which was something I added on my lesson after seeing it from classmates. I would defiantly use these new ideas with my lessons in the future.