Giles reflection 2

This lesson did not go over as well, and I think it is because they were bored with the story. I continued this lesson on from lesson 1, because I thought my topic had a lot to incorporate, and not enough time. By the time we did this one, they were uninterested and did not have much to say in the discussion about the book. They also forgot a lot of it, so we had to review for longer than I had expected. I noticed that their participation was not as awesome as it was last time, and I cannot blame them. The book does not have a lot of in depth conversation options, and because we went really in depth last time, they did not have a lot to say about it anymore. Even when I tied in the new terms and asked them to elaborate the story on those, they seemed uninterested and not as engaged. Although they did understand the objectives, as I could see on their worksheet at the end of the lesson plan, there was not as much enthusiasm. Next time I will use the same terms that I did in my lesson plan 2, but apply them to a new book.

            The strengths of the lesson were that they knew what to expect, and what was expected of them because of the similarities in comparison to this week’s lesson and last weeks. They knew how to behave and what was appropriate. The weakness was that they were bored. I could tell that they weren’t interested and this made it difficult to explain the new concepts to help them to get a greater depth on the story. I definitely should have brought in a new story, or chosen a better story to overlap in my two lessons.

            I noticed that as a teacher, I was able to keep their focus, even though they weren’t as into it this time. I also noticed that I am flexible. When their discussion got off topic, I allowed it, and was able to keep it on track, without cutting off their thoughts and connections. For example, Irene started talking about her pet at home, and I was able to ask questions to relate it to the animals in the story, to keep us on track. I do not have many questions for this reflection, because fortunately, my errors are obvious, and I know next time that I need to change things up a bit in order for the students to be more engaged and more entertained during the lesson. I understand that they had already discussed this book, and that’s why the lesson didn’t go as well as the first one.