Poetry+Reflection

Poetry Reflection

Well, my first lesson in this classroom was a disaster. It turns out that my lesson plans were not as well-planned as I thought. I completely skipped Modeling and Guided Practice. I threw my students into Independent Practice before they were ready for it. I had to pull the class back in 3 or 4 times to re-instruct. I feel embarrassed that so many people were in the room to witness it, but I think it is okay to get kicked off your horse the first time around. I just happened to do it in my first lesson – and in front of everyone. It was reassuring that my professors and co-op were nice and gave constructive advice. I’m here to learn, so that is what I’m going to do with this situation. I’m going to reflect upon it and change it next time around. Next time I will make sure I have strong Modeling and Guided Practice to slowly let the students try it on their own. Also, I’m going to make my instructions much clearer. I think that I’m struggling with the balance between spoon-feeding students information and allowing them space to explore. However, I think what I learned today is that when it comes to Language Arts, it is so important to use the Teach and Model rules, then let them explore writing/reading while using the guidelines. I am re-teaching the lesson next time I come into the classroom. I am confident that it will be great and so much better.

After re-teach:

Today’s lesson went so much smoother. All of the students were participating and wanted to contribute to the lesson. Last time I had a student with his head down on the table – completely uninterested. However, my re-modeled shaped up poetry lesson kept students engaged the entire time. The preparation I did this time around was a lot more specific, and I realized that students need to think they’re free to be creative, but the teacher is always in control. I also thought that my model of how to write a poem with end rhyme would go longer, but students were eager to participate in creating their own poem. They were raising their hands because they wanted to add lines to the poem. Then, I was pleased to hear enthusiastic “Yes!” and “Yeah!” when I suggested that we write one more as a class. In addition, this time around, I realized that I didn’t give them a good technique for brainstorming end-rhyming words. During today’s follow-up lesson we brainstormed rhyming words and talked about how to incorporate them into the poems. Also, I was so on my game! When a student asked me a question about why a line in our poem didn’t make sens, I thought up a quick and simple explanation. Maybe last time I would have been thrown for a loop, but today I had my feet steady on the ground and was able to answer questions that I wasn’t expecting. The poems that the students wrote today are incomparable to the poems from last time; they are superb. In addition, it came second-nature to me to take note of what skills the students were lacking in. If I were to continue in a poetry unit, I found several things I would teach next: rhythm, matching syllables, writing each line of a poem on a different line, just to name a few. Things I would improve upon in my own performance: capitalize the 1st letter of each line of a poem and use correct punctuation when writing on the board (to be a good model for students). I think the things that I did incorrectly were due to nerves, but overall I give this lesson a great thumbs up!