Assessing Prior Knowledge:I believe that assessing prior knowledge is very essential to teaching. For our lesson, we did not teach the students the specific concepts due to a time limit but rather had them do the centers. We informed them that our students have learned the concepts of find the rule, fractions, patterns, and measurement prior to the centers and review game. My understanding of assessing prior knowledge didn't necessarily change, but made me realize more how important it is to tap prior knowledge. Without giving students background to the lesson, students will feel lost and will struggle with the concepts being taught. Also, the lessons need to be tied to real life situations so that it has a deeper meaning for the students. For my future teaching experience, I will make sure that my students have a well-developed background knowledge of the content before teaching it. I do not want any of my students to feel stressed or lost EVER in my classroom.
Planning Instruction:
When we made our lesson plan we included a lot of state standards; however, we felt that we covered all of them in our lesson. Since our lesson is meant to be a unit plan, we managed to meet all the state standards. We knew we wanted to do a math lesson and decided to a target grade which was second. We then looked up the state standards to get an idea of what concepts we wanted to include in our lesson. Planning instruction came pretty easily for us because we knew that we wanted to do centers. We felt that when students have centers they learn more than doing worksheets. Having centers, students are working hands-on and interacting. We then planned on having a review game where we would meet our objective which is for students to be able to formulate their own questions generated from math content including fractions, find the rule, measurement and patterns. Students need to be not only problem solvers but also be able to formulate their own questions. This shows that they understand the concepts behind each problem. As a future teacher, planning instruction is very important because without planning what you want to do, you are just asking for a chaotic day. Teachers need to have an organized lesson outlined with everything they plan to do for the lesson.
Designing Instruction:
Designing instruction is what I enjoyed most about planning the lesson. Creating the lesson activities can sometimes be overwhelming but once you have figured out the concepts you want to cover and your objective, you can use your creativity to brainstorm activities that will help accomplish your goals. As I mentioned earlier, we decided to do centers because we felt that it made the students in charge of their own learning. It allowed them to discover the lesson on their own while we facilitated. Throughout this semester, I learned how important it is to design instruction. Students need to be engaged in the lesson in order to create a deeper understanding of the concepts, so teachers need to plan their activities carefully and double check that they are meeting the objectives. In the future, I know I will be spending a lot of time creating lessons that will be meaningful to my students and engaging. I want my students to enjoy the lessons rather than just go through the motions of learning it. I plan on having my classroom be student-centered so that my students are in charge of their own learning.
Planning Assessment:
Throughout this semester, I have learned how important assessment is not only in this class but all my other classes. I have gained a lot of new knowledge about assessment that I believe will help me in the future. Assessment is essential. In order to know if your students truly understand what they are doing, teachers need to have some sort of assessment whether it's formal or informal. I thought that for our lesson, the assessments we chose were prefect. Not too much but not too little. We had a rubric for the overall performance on the math unit, we had students turn in their completed work for assessing, and we had excel sheets to record their performance on the computer game and patterns. For my future experience as a teacher, I need to make sure that I always have some sort of an assessment whether it's a worksheet the students turn in or a test. I need to test their knowledge to make sure I have done my job as a teacher of teaching the concept. By assessing the students, as a teacher I will know if I need to do something different with my lesson or if an individual is struggling. Lessons are either a hit or a miss. The students learn the concept or they don't, it all depends on the teacher and how they implement their lesson.
Instructional Decisions/Teaching:
Each lesson needs to be designed to meet individual needs. There might be some students that are slower learners and need extra time to complete a task and there might be some students that are fast learners and need extra work while waiting on the rest of the class to finish. Modifications are needed to made so that each individual has the equal opportunity to succeed in the classroom. For example, finding the rule computer game might take students the full ten minutes or for those fast learners will take them half the time. In order to avoid misbehavior, the teacher should allow them to play other math games while waiting for others to finish. This way they are always occupied and it will minimize any disruptive behavior. I have learned from this semester that some students finish faster than others so teachers need to have a plan b such as a worksheet for those students to do rather than having them sit and do nothing or running around in the classroom. Also, it is important to keep the lesson aligned with the objective or else the objective or goal will not be met. For my teaching experience, I made sure that all the activities were aligned with the goal in mind. As a future teacher, I plan on always having extra worksheets or puzzles, etc. for those students that finish quickly and to allow enough time at centers for all students to finish and not feel rushed. I will also make activities are aligned with the objectives or else, throw them out and make new ones that will help accomplish meet the goal.
Assessment of Learning:
My whole teaching experience with Lela I felt was very successful. We received all the feedback we had hoped for and everyone was engaged in the centers. I thought we did a great job of aligning the centers to our objective and walking around the classroom for those that need help or have questions. We attended to every student's needs and were able to successfully assess them. Everyone turned in their worksheets and followed instructions as asked. We walked around assessing the pattern center and find the rule center and collected all the completed work including review questions. We had a rubric to assess their overall performance of each task and lesson. Our goal was met which helped assure me that I can do this in the real world. Overall, I thought this was a great experience, especially to get positive feedback from fellow classmates. As a future teacher, I hope to get the same response as I did from this experience. Assessment of learning is essential and can be rewarding when the objectives are met and the students had fun doing it. I can only hope that in my future teaching experience that I reach my goals and at the same time have my students succeed in the classroom.
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