Lesson Plan 3, Phase II: Reflections on Implementation

Phase 2, Lesson Three (Last one!)

Reflections with Amber! 

(Thus, the blog title. Get it?)

Good afternoon blog readers! My final lesson in ETC447 has now been completed and taught to my peers in class, and despite it being twice the length of my last 2 lessons, It went perfectly and served as a great wrap-up to the session as a whole. The poetry unit I chose to pursue as a whole could not have gone any better, and I can only hope that it goes as well with real third and fourth graders someday instead of my college age peers pretending to be that age!

Now that all is said and done, for the final time, I'll look back on exactly what I've done, reflect on the entire session, and determine in the future as a real teacher what can be done as a whole to improve upon.

Instructional Decisions/Teaching (InTask Standard # 9): Discuss the implementation process and describe:

• What went well and what didn't go well during the implementation of your lesson?
• How well was the alignment to objectives and standards maintained?
• Describe any modifications made during the implementation of the lesson

What I particuarly think went well this time was having my same students from the prior two lessons! They were engaged, remembered what we talked about before for review, and were enthusiastic to see what my last lesson had in store for them. That really encouraged me to do a great job and keep up to their expectations!

We all were friendly, and excited toward each other as we engaged in prior knowledge to draw on their background experiences with poetry opening up with their hymnals from before and the research from prior sections. My prior knowledge of the subject and personal experience with poetry that I could draw from and use in my discussion of the breakdown of the rhyming structure and different types of poetry helped me as it had before, but really my experiences with the technology we were using helped my students to catch on very quickly too.

They were interested in what I had to say during the recap, and stayed on topic as we moved into working with technology and doing their own research to create their own poetry! They were very eager to play with youtube in order to find their own instrumental tracks to combine their poetry to convert it into musical lyrics. Then, when they got to use iMovie to record what they had created, they were at first embarrassed but very quickly grew to liking the digital artifact portion of my lesson! I'd say the only thing that really didn't go well would be the wrap up at the very end. Everything went swimmingly until it came time to save the videos and import them from iMovie to a file they could email to me. i didn't take into account how long the computer would want to take to convert it into this type of file. We ran a little bit overtime by the time we got to filling out my surveys, but it ended up working out alright, ending at 10:55.

It aligned to my objectives and standards maintained-- and I hit everything that I hoped to in this final wrap up lesson. They got a great taste of what poetry is truly like, and got to create their very own works in the final hour! Being a chatterbox like myself, it's easy to get excited whens students are engaged with what you're talking about and lose track of your time limit. Thankfully, this time I stayed very close to what I'd hoped. I really think they actually learned a little bit from me, which is really exciting to think this wasn't just an assignment for class, but actually something beneficial to my peers!

Mechanics:

• What technologies did I use (for the teacher and the learner)?
• How were the technologies used (by whom and in what manner)?
• My lesson was within the correct time frame

The technologies that I used as the teacher included keeping a running document on Google docs of my lesson that I could refer to as I implemented each step and moved forward with my activities. By having it in plain sight, broken down with the approximate time I should spend on each area of the lesson, it really kept me on track and proved to be my most beneficial tool. Additionally, the students were able to access a separate google document, which I emailed to them including the necessary links to each poem and activity we were going to do together. This way, as I directed, they could simply click along the links in order to pull up what we were on. Each student had their own mac computer, and followed along exactly as planned, and participated in the activities I had, including their own research. I walked around to assist them and provide commentary on what they were discovering. This time, they also used the first Google doc to work collectively in a student work area at the tail end of the document. This is where they utilized their time for guided practice together before they were sent off on their own to work independently.

Assessment of Learning (InTask Standard # 6): 

1. Include at least 2 digital artifacts that demonstrate what you or your students (peers) have created as a result of your lesson

• Describe your students' level of success in achieving the standards and objectives for your lesson based on your assessment
• Describe the level of success you had in teaching the lesson
• How do your individual reflections support this?
• How do the comments from your classmates support this?

Below I have attached screenshots of the results of my lesson from my students. These "digital artifacts" serve as the proof of what my students worked on throughout the course of the lesson, and they absolutely achieved what I intended for them to in this third and final poetry lesson! We discussed extensively and I informally assessed whether or not through this they were grasping the material-- which they were! This section used more formalized assessments with utilizing my rubric, and here are key parts of what they discovered using the poem generators as guidelines to create their own, entirely original works. They used the structures from the generator but their own original ideas both as a group, and independently-- following the directions for expectations as well.

Group Collaboration Free Verse Poem

(inspired from the song "Kiss the Rain", a piano track by Yiruma)

The directions I gave my students was to listen to the provided song, and come up with about 5 words which is what it reminded them of. I guided them with some examples, such as: piano,  movies, dance, sad, night time. This is what they initially came up with!

Kiersten: :’) empowered, yoga, water, blankets, memories

Renee:  relaxation, rain, ballet, storm, calm

PAT---  princess,sleep,disney,cold,forest

We then used these words to create stanzas of poetry, and organized them into an interesting free verse piece entirely revolving around their original title "Rain." This of course got changed at the conclusion, but served as a great way to show them the process of poetry creation does not have to be linear, and can go any which way they want!

Here is their creation:

The Princess in the Rain

I find rain relaxing.

Listening to storms in the distance calms me.

It often reminds me of watching ballet dancers

dancing gracefully across the stage.

I am empowered to relax and do yoga today

There is water falling from the sky outside

A perfect day to wrap myself in blankets

and reminisce on old memories

I play the piano all the time

In the movies, I sing and I dance

Sometimes, I feel sad

But only at night time.

The princess fell into deep sleep

she didnt make a peep

The forest was cold

She grew into mold

But Disney wouldn't let her die so meek.

Next, we moved onto independent study, and here is what each student decided to work on for the remainder of their time and my lesson. Each student submitted a text copy of the poems they created along with the video evidence of their recording complete with youtube instrumental or karaoke tracks!

Artifact - Student 1 Renee 

Turtle

Hard shell like rock

Moves slow across the Earth

Eating grass at all times of day

Slowpoke

Cat

Fur black as night

Pounces on his victim

Sleeps throughout the rest of the day

Vicious

Student Renee selected to complete the Cinquain poems, meaning she must complete TWO of different subjects. She followed the directions set forth by me resulting in a good "grade" for that portion, while at the same time adhering to the structure of a cinquain and writing on her favorite subject, animals! She did a great job and followed it up with her video recording after a little practice:

Artifact - Student 2 Kiersten 

Artifact - Student 3 Pat

MOO

The little calf was cute

he couldnt moo for he was mute

he continued to grow

but grew real slow

until the day came he was turned to stew,,, oh shoot

the fire place glows

warming the midnight cool air

keeps me cozy yea

Student Pat selected to complete a Limerick poem and a haiku poem. Although he changed up my pre-determined requirements, he still followed the directions set forth by me resulting in a good "grade" for that portion, while at the same time adhering to the structures of the poems he chose. He also did a great job and followed it up with a rather silly video recording.

In conclusion, I believe that I had a very high level of success throughout not just this lesson, but the whole unit! According to the feedback forms that my students filled out on google forms at the conclusion of the lesson, I was presented with glowing reviews, reflecting on how my enthusiasm was contagious and they could tell I really loved what I was teaching-- and I agree with them! I'm thankful that the feedback reflected what I did in the first as well as second lesson and now third that the responses were good.  It's been such a blast getting a true taste fo teaching before it's time for the real deal!

Thanks for reading all this time, there will maybe be one more post before we're over and done with for the semester! But you all have been great, and this has been...
Reflections with Amber! 

(over and out!)