Looking down the Road of Experience

Looking down the Road of Experience

 

     Throughout this whole experience, I was nervous just thinking about the immense amount of work that needed to be done in such a short period of time. As time passed on and narrowed in on my opportunity to teach with my group, I observed the other groups and I gained knowledge on what I could do to my own lesson to show growth and development throughout the rest of the experience. This experience caused me to leave my comfort zone of completing assignments and writing lesson plans alone to enter a learning zone in which I would have to face others opinions and ideas to combine into one lesson plan. There were a few bumps in the road with minor misunderstandings when it came to designing the lesson plans, but once we were on the floor and teaching in front of the students, we went right into "teacher mode." 

     As weeks past by, I watched how the other groups handled the aspects of diagnostic, formative, and summative assessment and how they could be implemented in the real world teaching environment. I noticed how each group used a type of "Exit Ticket" during the Direct Instruction as a summative assessment and so I felt like it wouldn't be necessary to change the routine and give the students something similar that way it would appear to be familiar for them. During the inquiry instruction and cooperative learning lesson, we steered away from using an Exit ticket and made the summative assessment a type of assessment that would engage the students into something exciting that would be meaningful and something that they would remember. 

     Before actually teaching for field work, I had a basic understanding of what a direct, inquiry, and cooperative learning lesson would be like and now at the end of field work, I have a firm understanding of what a direct, inquiry, and cooperative learning lesson should look like and be like in the elementary classroom. By working collaboratively with a group of 5 other teacher candidates, I learned that there are a lot of different ideas that can be contributed into achieving the same goal. It was difficult at times with just choosing one idea to go along with and branch off of, but for the most part once we selected an idea, we all went along with it and expanded it with our individual creativity. While we were designing our lesson plans, we were thinking off the top of our heads based on our previous observations from groups before us and now that I look back at our lesson plans, we used a variety of Instructional Methods that are located in the Instructional Approaches article. 

     Although we incorporated all three types of assessments into all three of our lesson plans, the primary assessments that had a strong impact throughout the all three lessons were the formative and summative assessment. The formative assessment was present during both of the learning sessions in which the students were working and establishing an understanding of what was asked and explained throughout the lesson. The summative assessment was present and designed for all three lessons which the students had done independently.

Will post summative assessment for direct here.

   During the direct instruction, I was able to view some of the students strengths and challenges by the way that the students worked and promoted their answers in the summative assessment. The use of an Exit Ticket was not only encouraged by the responses of the students from previous field work sessions, but it was inspired by the TeachingChannel which defined an Exit Ticket to be a valuable resource that provides a quick look for the teacher at how well the students are doing, who understands the material, who needs extra reinforcement, who needs a reteach, etc. One of the strengths that I noticed from the Exit Tickets were that the students understood the concept of what an active citizen was. Some of the challenges that could be seen within the Exit Tickets were primarily grammar and spelling mistakes (which were expected) and perhaps a few misunderstandings of the difference between the president and the governor. To evaluate this problem, a very quick re-teach session could be administered by stating the difference between the two during the next lesson or some examples that are student-friendly that could perhaps set up visual examples of the difference between the two terms. 

Will post summative from inquiry

      During the inquiry instruction, we decided to keep things simple and evaluate the students based on their hypothesis' and  conclusions with supporting evidence located on their voting tickets. Some strengths that I observed throughout the inquiry instruction was that most of the students understood the inquiry process and most of the students established reasonable conclusions with supporting evidence which refers back to their note charts. Some of the challenges that some of the students faced were that specifically relating to spelling errors which was not counted for during this instruction. 

Will post formative from cooperative

     During the cooperative learning lesson, the students were evaluated based on a rubric that revolved around their campaign posters. Most of the students were able to accomplish and reach the scores on the rubric which was remarkable to witness. 

      For future lessons when working with this specific group of students, I would highly recommend keeping things simple and not overwhelmingly complex. This group of students really adapted to the style and format of having a general exit ticket that only consists of 3-4 questions. It's an ordinary way to keep things in tact while providing the teacher with a sense of closure and understanding as to what the teacher should do next without having to go into a full blown out 20 question assessment. The instructional methods that I would suggest for future usage by this group would be explicit teaching, demonstrations, concept mapping, inquiry, role playing, simulations, learning centers, assigned questions, cooperative learning groups, and times for discussion. This group of 2nd graders worked wonderfully with one another and would benefit from more activities that encouraged them to work collaboratively. 

It is always important to remember to engage all of the learners and provide an equal opportunity learn for all children no matter what.

     For each of the lesson plans, we developed a set of accommodations and modifications to include all of the learners into our experience. To adapt future experiences, the learners who are struggling or experiencing difficulty will receive extra reinforcement and could possibly work with a peer for reassurance and steering into the general direction. Those who are advanced can do the same learning lesson, but embellish their own learning finished products. All students deserve a chance for success and this experience opened my eyes to notice that not all of the students are at the same level in the classroom, so as a future educator, I must be ready to teach at all levels of mastery. 

     When thinking about future inquiry situations and how to foster problem solving skills or critical thinking skills, through observations, I was able to view how each student was able to complete the task and provide their own opinions on the matter at hand. Lessons that revolved around self-evaluation and self-questioning strategies would be an effective way to constantly reinforce the matters of problem solving and critical thinking skills. Giving the students problems and scenarios that would relate to real world experiences would also be a beneficial concept to refer to when working on problem solving and critical thinking skills. 

     Collaboration should always be an approach that can constantly be reused over and over again. Students learn from each other. By interacting with one another, the students are teaching each other and sharing their own knowledge with each other to further expand their knowledge on the subject at hand. After keeping all of these informative tactics and inspirational methods in mind, when it came to actually implementing these lesson plans and bringing them to life in the classroom, I was very excited and impressed by the turn out. After this experience, I feel confident to teach Social Studies now because I know that I can successfully teach concepts without referring directly to the reading of the textbook and relying primarily on the students to be able to read. I can now make Social Studies exciting and hands on for all of the students to collaborate and develop an understanding or a passion for learning Social Studies.