Mini Lesson Reflection

On Tuesday, November 8th, and Thursday, November 10th, each student in 343/361 had the opportunity to teach two twenty minute lessons back to back. This was a great experience that took a lot of planning. A folder of documents can be seen here and include my lesson plan, documents for my activities and assessments, my agenda for both days, and the feedback documents from both my peers/students and professors. 

This experience of planning and implementing two back to back lessons aligns with the Performance Criterion 6.1, candidates implement multiple methods of assessment to monitor learner progress to  inform instructional practice, and Performance Criterion 7.1, candidates plan instruction by drawing upon knowledge of content areas to meet rigorous learning goals. Due to the class size only being four people, it was very easy to assess the students multiple times and multiple ways. At the end of Tuesday's class I had them hand in an exit slip which involved them writing down questions they still had and something that they learned from the lesson. On Thursday's class I had the opportunity to personally communicate with each student in regards to the activity they did, as well as I had them answer a short essay response question. To meet performance criterion 7.1, I used my interest in World War II combined with one of the standards I chose for my unit, College, Career & Civic Life C3 Framework for Social Studies State Standards: D2.His.3.6-8., to create a lesson centered around responsibility and the Holocaust.

This back to back teaching opportunity was not my first experience with teaching back to back because, a few weeks ago, I had the same opportunity at my placement. During my placement lessons, I was also given the chance to teach the same lesson in two morning Social Studies mods. During that experience, I learned to modify from one mod to another because, as can be expected, the first mod did not go as planned. During the back to back lessons in 343/361, I learned more about modifying from one day to another and I look forward to learning how to better modify for multiple class mods who may, or may not, be moving at the same pace.

In regards to modifications from Tuesday's lesson to Thursday's lesson, I used the exit slips that students turned in on Tuesday and created a review sheet for them. The reason I did this was primarily because the lesson I chose to teach would be placed towards the end of the fourth week of the unit I designed, therefore, it will be important for students to have the background knowledge of everything we discussed up to that point to apply in developing their ideas about responsibility and the Holocaust. Considering the fact that we only had forty minutes over two days to teach this lesson, I felt the quickest way would be to create a review sheet for students to review rather than spending a day of class reviewing. In a future classroom, with more time, I would plan time for review during class with the review sheet as a take home supplement.

My final assessment involved a short answer essay of the prompt: How did the person/people you assigned the most blame to affect the way the Holocaust is perceived as historically significant? How would the Holocaust change if that person/group of people was not involved? This is a variation of the focusing questions which can be seen on my lesson plan. It also allows the students to form their own opinion about responsibility and blame, considering they are often subjective ideas. Since students also had to use information from the unit to justify their responses, they had the opportunity to demonstrate their learning as well.

The activity that I chose to have the students complete was very engaging for students, so I believe that it will be a great activity for my future classroom if/when I teach this unit. While I have always enjoyed and appreciated having agendas in my classes, I discovered just how helpful they are for teachers as well. Having an agenda helped to keep me aware of time and ensured that I did not run over my allotted time. The use of the agenda also allowed students to know what would be happening during class and what expectations I had.

The main revision that I would make to this lesson plan for my final unit would be to include more time for students to work on the activity and, with a larger class, more time for discussion. I am designing my unit around 90 minute class periods, so I feel as though time may be less of an issue.

One thing I would like to focus on as I move towards and during student teaching would be internal confidence. This process of creating and teaching back to back lessons has shown me that I am extremely capable of teaching and being successful. However, I have a tendency to believe that I will fail and/or the lesson will go horribly and/or I will not know enough about the given subject to teach my students effectively. I have learned, during student teaching, that failing is okay because there will be another teacher in the room to step in when necessary, that every lesson is a learning opportunity and as long as students learn it does not matter if you make a fool of yourself, and that whenever I feel that I know less about a subject than I should, that means I need to study and read more about it. I believe that by working diligently on improving myself a little bit each and every day, that this goal is more than attainable.