My Path to Teaching

Prezi: My Path to Teaching

I made this presentation at the start of my Curriculum course this semester.  Since then, I have come a long way.  I feel that the end of this course represents the end to my path to teaching. I feel that now I am here, and am really starting to develop who I am as a teacher.  I now know the process of developing lessons, units, and an entire course.  My major take away is the importance of scaffolding. My lessons need to build on each other, so students can see a clear process to achieving an end goal.  I am ready for the next stages of my teaching journey!

Learning Plan: First Lesson, Literacy Lesson, and Tech Lesson

Unit Lessons

The following link includes my learning plan for three lessons of my unit. The first lesson begins with an overview of the war during 1941 and 1942.  The course is taught chronologically, so students should already have an understanding of the first two years of war.  Then, students will learn what the "People's War" is and why WWII was considered a "People's War."  To do so, students will participate in a reenactment. This is an example of criterion 3.2 and 4.2 because students are active and are making the concept come to life.  In the literacy lesson, I also address criterion 4.2 because the advertisement activity is a way for students to see how propaganda relates to their own lives. In my technology lesson, criterion 5.2 is addressed because students need to critically think about what they are reading, watching, and listening to. Students need to create, collaborate with their peers, and communicate their ideas when creating the piktochart.  Throughout my unit, I tried to address a variety of these performance criteria.  

Unit Plan

Unit Plan

Cumulative Assessment: Journal Project

Journal Project Rubric

The two aspects of my unit plan that I am most proud of are the way I scaffolded my unit and lessons and my use of formative assessments.  The major take-away from my Curriculum and Literacy courses this semester is that instruction needs to be progressive and prepare students to work towards a final goal or product.  Students should not be constantly graded.  Formative assessments are ways in which students can practice and prepare to demonstrate what they have learned.  For example, my cumulative assessment for the unit was a journal project.  Each week students handed-in one journal entry, not for a grade, but to receive feedback.  Students will not receive a grade until all five journal entries have been handed-in.  Constant feedback will become a key part of my future pedagogy.  The journal entries are not the only examples of formative assessments in my unit.  I have various exit-slips, discussion activities, presentations, and reflections to check-in with students and to be used to guide my instruction.

I tried to make sure each lesson built upon each other and that within each lesson there was evidence of scaffolding.  For example, when looking at primary and secondary sources, I first explained what the difference was and asked students to categorize different examples. Then, I modeled how to read a primary source before I asked students to try on their own.  In my unit plan, I think I demonstrate my understanding of the importance of building on student skills, meeting criterion 4.2.  I think I organized the entire unit and each lesson in a non-overwhelming way.

Brown Girl Dreaming Workshop

Tonight I was fortunate enough to attend a workshop on Brown Girl Dreaming, sponsored by Integrating Art, Social Studies, and Language Arts. The workshop consisted of a number of engaging activities.  We began with a theme brainstorm of the book, in which we were asked to turn and talk with a partner and think about the themes we noticed when reading Brown Girl Dreaming. As a group, some of the major themes we noticed were identity, family, friendship, place, education.  Afterwards, four poems from the book were recited, and we were asked to keep them in mind for the rest of the workshop.  There was then a brief lecture on free verse, so we could understand Woodson's writing before we could write our own.  This transitioned us into a free verse activity. My group was assigned the theme of friendship.  We were given different images to trigger our thinking, then we created our own free verse poem in small groups.  To break up the session, we played the game Zip Zap.  I think this was a good way to get us up and moving before we continued. After the game, we did a tableau activity, in which we created a still scene of each other's free verse poems.  Finally, we had time to reflect.  We created a group mural about what the book made us think about and then created a free verse poem about ourselves.

I thought these activities were a really nice way of getting us to think about the book.  I'm definitely going to add some of these techniques, like the tableau, to my strategies tool kit.  I also enjoyed how we had time at the end of the lesson to reflect.  I think this is crucial to every lesson.  All learners need time to process new information and think about the activities they just participated in.  The workshop was a perfect example of a lesson that designs approaches that engage.  There was a nice balance of discussing in partners, small groups, and with the whole class, reflecting individually, writing, drawing, getting up and moving.  I was busy and engaged the whole time, but it never felt overwhelming.

This is the free verse my group wrote based on the images we saw and from what we remembered from the theme of friendship in the novel. 

This is from reflection.  We added images and words to the class mural based on the themes of the book.  The papers next to the mural are our free verses about ourselves.