Learning Letter

One aspect that I thought was really interesting with this course was the feedback that we received during the mini-lessons and getting to see other peoples’ approaches to teaching. It was a great way to see many of the approaches and methods that we had discussed in this class implemented. The three week unit plan was also an interesting aspect with this course, primarily because it showed how long it takes to plan out a unit. We put ours together essentially from scratch, and, on the first day we worked on it, we spent like seven and a half hours just sketching out questions, concepts, and some objectives that we wanted to address with each lesson. So that was just like pre-real project work, not even stuff that we were turning in, and it took what seemed like forever to do.

            In regards to concepts, I think that many of the items talked about in “I Read It, But I Don’t Get It” were useful in regards to increasing students’ comprehension of texts, such as with the various activities at the back of the book. They gave examples about how to really help students, especially ones who struggle with reading, so that text would be a good one for referring to in the future during actual instruction.

            I think that this class has helped me think about how I’ll structure things in the future. For example, I think that when I teach, I’ll have a template for setting up unit plans that (hopefully) makes it easier. Also, I think that in an actual classroom setting, I’ll try to have a set schedule or pattern for instructional techniques so as to save time. By this, I mean that if I intend to do whole class discussions once a week, I’ll have them always on the same day so that students know how to arrange desks and whatnot because, honestly, we had to adjust the tables in our classroom during the mini-lessons for every other teacher, and that took forever, especially when the class wasn’t fully sure about how the teacher wanted it set up.