Final Blog for Language Arts

· Reflection of your lesson
The lesson my partner and I did on Friends went well. With that said, I still would definitely like to try the lesson again, so I could try different discipline techniques and all. This was my first time team teaching a lesson and I had to try and adjust to that. Sometimes both of us weren’t on the same page and I’m sure success with team teaching comes with practice. Overall, I believe the lesson went well and I enjoyed teaching it.

o How did you (and your partner) prepare?
My partner and I prepared for the lesson by revising our first draft of the lesson plan and adding what we thought the lesson needed and taking out objectives that we didn’t think we would be able to accomplish. After, that we created worksheets and rubrics that we would need for the lesson. We also, checked our PowerPoint presentation and our podcast of Friends to make sure everything was running smoothly.

o Explain the objective and assessment measures of your lesson.
The objectives for this lesson were a reflection of the book. We wanted to make sure the students understood what the story was about, so that’s why the first objective was that students would be able to recall the characters’ names and hobbies. We would access this through a matching worksheet that would be graded with a simple rubric. For the second objective we thought since the story was all about Oscar’s encounters with other characters doing their favorite activities, that the students should be able to write what their favorite activity is in a sentence and draw a picture of themselves and Oscar doing that activity. This writing and drawing worksheet would be accessed by a simple check plus, check, and check minus rubric.

o Was your lesson plan executed exactly as it was written?
For the most part our lesson was executed exactly as it was written.

o What was the most important thing I tried to teach your students?
The most important thing that I tried to teach the students was to write and draw their own page to the book Friends.

o How do you think it went?
Overall, I think it went well and I accomplished my objectives.

o What did I learn from your students?
I learned from my students to have given them a book instead of a coloring worksheet, while they waited for other students in the classroom to finish.

o What would you have done differently?
I would have given my students a book to read first instead of a coloring worksheet.

o How could you have made the lesson even more effective?
To make the lesson more effective, I think I would have given the students a book instead of a coloring worksheet to read, while they waited for the rest of the class to finish their work. I would also have stuck to one disciplinary system.

o What do you think you need to improve or do differently?
I think I should have been sterner in my voice when it came to the disciplinary problems.

· Reflection of Podcast

o How did you and your partner plan to use the podcast in your lesson?
We planned to play the podcast along with the PowerPoint presentation of the book, the first time through. Then, have one of the teachers read the book the second time through.

o Did you use it during the class lesson? Why or why not?
We did use the podcast during the class lesson, because we thought it gave the students a different way of hearing the story and it also used technology in the classroom.

o How did your students react to the podcast?
I think the students really enjoyed hearing the podcast along with the PowerPoint presentation.

o How do you think it went?
Even though, the volume on the speakers was a little low, overall I thought it went really well.

o What could you have done to infuse the podcast into the lesson more effectively?
I don’t think we really could have infused the podcast into the lesson more effectively, at least with this specific lesson.

o Do you have any other ideas of how you would use podcasting in your lesson or future lessons?
The advantage of podcasting is that there are so many possibilities of using it in lessons. A perfect example of using it in the future is when teaching vowel sounds, I could record the sounds of the long vowel sounds and the short vowel sounds, so that the students don’t just see it, but also hear it.

· Reflection of other classmates' lessons

o Please write a short 2-3 paragraph reflection of your classmates’ lessons.
I thought all the lessons in the class this year, were absolutely great. It was really neat to see everyone put so much effort into their lesson plans. Also, this class allowed everyone to add feedback at the end of lessons, to help the students get ideas for the future or congratulate them on a great job.
There were two lessons that stuck out to me the most, one was two students wanted to use paint in an elementary school classroom, but instead of having the students get their hands a mess and therefore making the classroom messy, they tried something new. They used a shoebox and a bouncy ball to smear the paint around on the worksheet, so that the students never had to put their hands in the paint. The second lesson that stood out was two teachers created Popsicle sticks with each animal that was in the story and every group got one of the animals in the book. Then, every time an animal appeared in the story the group with that animal would have to make that animal’s sound. Overall, the lessons were great and I learned something new from each one.

o Include critiques or any methods you learned when participating in these lessons.
The methods I learned when participating in the lessons were mostly in the disciplinary systems. One method was each group started off with one piece of pie and if they behaved they gained more pieces of pie and if they misbehaved they lost pieces of pie. Then, there was one lesson where the students received golden tickets when the behaved and the student with the most golden tickets at the end of the day/lesson won a prize.

Almost There

Today, was a very successful day. Christine and I decided to team teach our book "Friends" and we also decided not to podcast our questions, because both of us rather ask the questions ourselves. Other than that we got everything done that we wanted to, in addtion to finishing our lesson plan. All, we have to do now, is to type up the lesson plan itself, make up all the worksheets and rubrics, and print out all the materials needed for our lesson. I'm looking forward to teaching this lesson. :)

Decision Time

Christine and I will write and podcast our comprehension questions for our story, so that we will have two options when we do our lesson(s).
Today, we will first podcast the comprehension questions. Next, we will discuss whether we want to team teach or teach our story and lesson on our own. Once we figure out what we want to do, then we will start to plan our lesson(s).

Podacasting II

Friday, Christine and I did a lot better than our first attempt at podcasting. There were no technical difficulties at all and we were more composed in our reading. Alternating page by page reading is working really well for us and we're pretty sure that we got exactly what we wanted on Friday for our final read through of "Friends." Hopefully, Tuesday we will be able to finalize any sounds or pictures that we may want and pick the 5 comprehension questions that we liked the best and that we think will work well with what we want to do in our lessons. Overall, we almost there!

Pre-podcasting II

Today, Christine and I will try the same method of reading for our book "Friends." This method is that Christine will read the title of the book, the author and the first page, then I will read the second page of the book and we will keep alternating the reading page by page.
These past couple of days I did practice reading on my own to try and familiarize myself with the book, since I had never read it before Tuesday. I believe this has helped me pace my reading and to know the right words, instead of making up words as I read. I guess I will see the results today when we podcast. Hopefully, we can nail the reading today without any mistakes. :)

First Podcasting

I really like podcasting a lot. Both Christine and I were away last Friday, so I'm not able to compare or contrast this week to last week. However, I liked our reading style (page by page) it worked really well. The only thing that we both want to fix is to practice reading the book a little more and to compose ourselves while we are reading. Also, the only problem we had in the beginning of the podcasting was switching the microphone back and forth, because you could hear us switching it in the podcast. Our solution to this, is that the next time we read is for one person to hold the microphone and the other person to flip the pages. Overall, I think it was successful and I can't wait to finalize our work on Friday. :)

Pre-podcasting

I'm working with Christine DeMedici on the book "Friends" by Rob Lewis. We decided to read the book page by page our first time through. If we think we should change the reading style up after we're done, we'll make adjustments the next time around. I hope it works and I look forward to podcasting our book for the first time. Our introduction to podcasting link is: http://christinedemed.podomatic.com/entry/2009-09-22T07_08_21-07_00