For my observation, I taught a lesson to launch the new reading unit, Nature’s Fury. Students seemed to be really interested in the topic and were highly motivated by the activities that I presented because they were new and very emotionally charged.
I started with a warm-up asking students to write about a time when the weather had changed their plans. This got them thinking about environmental events and how they impact humans while also making connections with the students’ own personal experiences. Students were eager to share their responses with the class and I had to cut off sharing time even though not all students got a chance to respond. They were very excited to be able to use their own lives as learning experiences.
After the warm-up, the students did the graffiti activity where they basically got to “dump” everything they knew about natural disasters using pictures and words. Students were excited to do this because the material was of high interest and because it gave them an opportunity to do something new. This was the first time we had used this activity and many of the artists in the classroom were excited to have a chance to use their talents for an assignment. They were also sharing a piece of poster paper with their table so although they weren’t allowed to talk to each other during the activity, they were still able to work together. It was also helpful to me because it gave me an idea of what the students already knew about natural disasters. We displayed the posters on the board for everybody to see and briefly described them.
Next came the video that showed clips of several disasters as they happened. There were no words which was really powerful because it encouraged the students to use the images and their own imaginations to create an emotionally charged experienced. Students were very engaged by this activity because it gave them an authentic image of what a natural disaster can do. Many of them have heard of them happening or seen the aftermath on the news, but most had not actually seen any footage of one as it happened. This set the stage very nicely for the rest of the unit. It also got them concerned about what they could do if they ever found themselves in that situation.
This set up was very helpful because the next part of this lesson asked students to become an expert on one natural disaster and then to create a poster describing it and at least two safety tips that people can use. Students were concerned about what would happen if they ever encountered a hurricane or an earthquake so they were eager to read about how to stay safe. Allowing them to create a poster using pictures and words was also more motivating to them than just writing another BCR. They write BCRs all the time and have been for several years so giving them an opportunity to demonstrate their knowledge in a different way was exciting for them. It also appealed to different learning styles. There are several students in the class who doodle all the time and they are often reprimanded for being off task. This activity gave them a chance to use their talents in a useful way.
I think that the use of a timer really helped me keep the pace of the lesson. I was prepared for the lesson so there was no time where students were waiting for me to give directions as I tried to figure out what came next. As they came in from recess, the materials they needed were listed on the board and I gave directions ahead of time so that students knew what they were going to be doing next. In an earlier period when I taught this lesson, we finished much earlier because the students worked faster. I’m not sure how to get students to work faster yet, but that is something I want to look into for future lessons. The TAG class spends a lot of time thinking about what they want to do before they do it, which takes up a significant amount of class time. I also found that their work was very creative but that they did not really address all of the information that I told them they needed to include. This was frustrating because I provided an example, I posted the rubric for them to see, and I discussed the assignment verbally.
Off task behavior was not particularly problematic during this lesson because students were highly interested in the material. There were some side conversations but I was able to pull those students back in either with an engaging activity (graffiti or the video), by moving closer to them, or by calling on them to answer a question. I also reminded them that they would be given checks for poor behavior and at the end of class, passed out Charactergrams to those students who were demonstrating exceptional behavior. I also can credit their respectful and attentive behavior to the fact that my mentor teacher has presented me as an “actual teacher” from the beginning of the year. The students did not even know that I was a student until recently and they have treated me with the same amount of respect that they give to their regular classroom teachers.
Assessment was used throughout the lesson. At the beginning, I assessed student knowledge of the environment’s impact on human life and they shared their responses. I also asked them to take notes on what they saw in the videos and what they read about to make sure that all students were on task and engaging in the lesson. I also asked questions as necessary to ensure that students were paying attention. Because this was the launch for a larger unit about natural disasters and the point was to get them prepared for what is to come, much of the assessment was to assure that they were paying attention rather than to assess what they knew. The assessment kept them accountable throughout the learning experience.
In future lessons, I hope to be able to use more group activities and to continue to introduce innovative resources and assignments. The students seemed to enjoy the different resources and the technology that we used and I hope to be able to expose them to more that in the future. I also want to work on my time management. Although we finished in time for dismissal, we did not have time to take our spelling test. I want to learn how to motivate students to work faster without compromising the quality of their work.
