Going into this lesson, my focus students did
not know what a prediction was – or at least they did not know what the term
prediction meant. After I explained what
it meant however, they realized that they make predictions every single day,
starting with the example I had them start out with: predicting whether they
would have indoor or outdoor recess. This
leads into the strength of the lesson because it is so applicable to everyday
life, and the students saw that predicting is something that they can easily
and sometimes subconsciously do while they are reading any given text.
The biggest limitation of this lesson was
time. My mentor teacher ran a bit over
on his writing activity, so I did not have much time at all to complete this
small group lesson before it was time for the kids to go to lunch. To help compensate for my lack of time, I
adjusted the plan a little bit so that we could still get through what was
necessary to get the point across, and still send the students to lunch on
time.
It was from this limitation however, that I
learned about myself as a teacher. I had
to make adjustments to my lesson plan on the spot to ensure that I was able to
get through everything that needed to be covered and budget my time in order to
complete the lesson. As I watched the
time tick away during my teacher’s writing lesson, I began to get a little
worried, but once I had the kids with me in our small group, I stayed calm and
just did what needed to be done. I think
this is a good lesson for the future. As
a teacher, we have to be ready to think on our feet and make last minute alterations
to plans. This can be a scary thing,
through this lesson and this year, I learned that I can do it.
My students made some great predictions, and
they seemed to actually really enjoy the activity, as well as the story. However, I am not so sure that they really
made the connection to how making predictions can help us when reading, and I
think that if I had had more time I definitely would have developed this idea
in further depth.
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