324 Lesson 6



    Since this was our last lesson, we decided to spend extra time on our icebreaker to help our students feel relaxed and not stressed. 

    We started with a thankfulness worksheet where they had to write something they were thankful for from A–Z. After that, we went over our class norms and schedule like we normally do. I went through our anchor chart about paragraph shrinking and then my partner explained the vocabulary words. 

    One of our students went to the restroom, and since we didn’t want to start reading the paragraph without him, we began working on a crossword puzzle instead. By the time he got back, there were only about five minutes before they had to leave for their assembly, so we continued the crossword puzzle until they returned.

    When they came back from assembly, we restarted our paragraph shrinking activity. We reviewed the anchor chart again and then used my computer to display the paragraph so they could highlight the parts needed for paragraph shrinking. 

S    ince the “who or what,” the “important information,” and the “main idea” were all color-coded on the anchor chart, using the highlighter on the computer gave them a strong visual to help them pick out what they needed while filling out their worksheet.

                                                    

    We only had one student for this part because our other student went to his services right after the assembly. Our student who stayed did a great job completing paragraph shrinking independently. My partner and I also completed one ourselves so that when we shared out, we had three different examples of how to summarize the paragraph in ten words or less.

    When we finished that activity, we moved on to writing a creative story about what they would do if I were a sea turtle, since our book was about sea turtles. 

    My student and I started with the graphic organizer, while my partner helped our other student finish his paragraph shrinking since he got back from his services. He then began the graphic organizer, but he did not have time to transfer it into a full story because we were running out of time. 



    My student was able to complete her entire story, but she was not in the mood to draw a picture, which was okay since time was limited anyway. We made sure to save a few minutes to give our students their cards, and then we wrapped up and said goodbye.

    All of our objectives were met because both students were able to complete the paragraph shrinking worksheet and also participate in the creative story writing activity. One of our students did not finish turning his graphic organizer into a full story, but he still met the main objective by completing the paragraph shrinking with support. Our other student completed both parts fully, which shows she met the objectives as well.

    What was learned from this experience was that our students really benefited from having extra time to ease into the lesson, especially on days when there were schedule changes like assemblies. We also learned that giving students visuals, like highlighting the paragraph on the computer, helped them understand the paragraph shrinking steps better. This experience will influence my professional identity by reminding me to stay flexible and adjust when schedules change or when students need more time. It showed me how important it is to keep lessons calm and low-stress, especially toward the end of a unit when running low on time.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

324 Lesson 1

Image
          During the lesson, students participated in an icebreaker activity and then helped create our classroom norms. Each student gave at least one norm to add to our list, which helped them feel involved in setting expectations. After that, we went over our agenda and introduced the topic of story elements. The students were very engaged and offered to read what was on the anchor chart, taking turns reading every other puzzle piece. I explained that our lesson would focus on story elements using a story map. I had an example ready with The Three Little Pigs , which they had heard of before, and the students took turns reading the example map. After that, my partner explained that they would make a story map with the story Rapunzel .  Before we started, we shared vocabulary words from the story, and the students were excited to take turns reading the definitions.                        ...
Read more

324 Lesson 2

Image
     During the lesson, we started with an acrostic poem as our icebreaker to get to know the students better. They used their first names and wrote adjectives or things they liked that started with the letters in their names. Each student, my partner, and I shared our acrostic poems as well. From this, we learned that one of our students really enjoys music, and the other student enjoys basketball and animals. After this, we went over our norms again and then started our lesson about making predictions.       I explained our anchor chart and talked about what predictions are, and also how we had sentence starters written on the chart for when they would write their predictions. My partner introduced the vocabulary words. Even though our book didn’t have any printed words, there was still a lot of vocabulary used to describe what was happening in the pictures. Most of our vocabulary words were about the ocean or cameras, and the students enjoyed taking...
Read more