Gabriels Lesson Plan 2 Reflection

Lesson Plan 2 Reflection

Lesson plan 2 is the continual of lesson plan 1 alone with adding the magic e, with vowel A, which is why I wasn’t surprised with how it went. I knew that students would be engaged again and excited to be able to draw the objects and pictures they wanted to, along with creating words that start with various letters. Again, students were excited to participate and eager to answer me and give their responses. They had trouble coming up with words for letters x, and y, which was no surprise to me. I expected Kyle and Dan to hesitate with these, however after I told them to think about the pictures in the classroom that they remember seeing Kyle was able to come up with the word “yellow”. Dan laughed at this and said “oh yeah! How did I forget that!” During the vowel portion of the lesson, Dan and Kyle struggled to come up with words with long and short vowels. It came to a point where I just asked them to come up with words that have the sounds and I would tell them if that word expressed a long or short vowel. This was defiantly a limitation to my lesson. I assumed that because my CT had gone of vowel I that Kyle and Dan would be able to give me explains for vowel A, however they were unable to do so. They both need to have a better foundation of vowels and their sounds before they are able to describe the differences between long and short vowels.

The strength of this lesson was giving Kyle and Dan the review they like and need to get a solid foundation of the letters and their sounds. It was evident to me that these students need repetition in their learning and benefit from patterns in their instruction. This was clear to me when I saw how they reacted to the vowel chart, and how little knowledge they had of vowel A. A few times both Kyle and Ben gave me words with the vowel I. I believe this happened because my CT recently did the same type of instruction with vowel I. This shows me that they didn’t comprehend the concept, they simply remember what my CT had said. During their recess break I told my CT how the lesson went and what I observed. She told me that many of the students are having trouble with the magic e concept and not to worry. Next year teachers will focus more time on the concept and she is simply doing an preview to it. This made me feel better about how this part of my lesson went. Any coverage of a topic is better then no coverage at all. However, this leaves me wondering if I am doing an overview of a topic how much time do I need to spend with the topic, and what do I do with students who simply have no idea, and students who really understand it and want to learn more about it. This inequality is always on my mind while I teach lessons. I often struggle with what to do when a group of students finishes a task way before other students. It’s hard to me to tell these students what to do when they are finished when I have no say in what they did after my lesson is over. This is a skill that I hope to master, and soon.