I must admit the unit plan was definitely something that required a lot of time, organization and very detailed planning.
After hearing everyone's responses to the questions regarding our unit planning, it seems like the main concern was piecing it all together. For the most part, everyone wondered what the correct order to teach the lessons would be so that students have the best opportunity for learning. It was also exciting to see that everyone was looking forward to using their unit plans in their future classrooms. As stated earlier, it was definitely something that takes a lot of time to plan, and I believe that we all went into it not just as another assignment for school but with the mind set that one day this would be presented to our students. This was a real life exercise for us and even though it was a lot of work and at times difficult to get it all together, as we continue to work on our units and as we gain experience it will not be such a task. I look forward to being able to teach my unit in a classroom. And I already have things I want to tweak and improve.
Teach Like a Champion is such a magnificent resource, there are so many valuable techniques that I am excited to apply in my classroom. Some of the ones that I looked into this week were: #46 Joy Factor, this one encourages us to find and promote the joy in learning. Making our classrooms fun by focusing on the rewards gained by learning the different lessons in our classroom; #35 Props, finding ways to celebrate our students even after minimal achievements like answering a question correctly. Establishing a way that the whole class can participate in a quick way that does not disturb the lesson but encourages students to continue working and participating; #24 Pepper, this encourages the use of activities revolving around groups that can be done in a quick manner to review information that students are already familiar with and expand on those skills; #26 Everybody Writes, this is the one I covered in class this week. I especially like this one as it allows time for students to write down and collect their thoughts before answering. There is nothing worst than when a student raises their hand to answer a question and forgets what they were going to say by the time they are called on. It breaks my heart to see their little disappointed faces when this happens. These were just some of the ones I looked at in class but there are so many more which provide so much value for our classrooms.
Lemov, D. (2010). Proven Practices from Teach Like a Champion. Retrieved from
https://dese.mo.gov/sites/default/files/11-Research-ProvenPracticesTLAC.pdf
Before I begin I'd like to apologize to my blog group for being so late with my post. I missed Tuesday's class because my daughter had a math competition, then I couldn't get to the recording of the class on Friday so I requested an extension from Dr. Steffes', in hopes that I could watch it on our way to Legoland on Saturday and write my blog. Turns out I couldn't get it to play on my phone. So here I am Sunday night scramming to catch up with all my assignments. Did I mention we celebrated my youngest daughter's birthday this weekend, with two different grandparents visiting from Miami and Las Vegas. So very busy weekend and poor planning on my behalf. I feel awful because both of you girls are always ahead of the curve. So again, I am truly sorry for this very late post!
Now, to my post... what a great way to close the presentations of our lesson plans. Everyone has such great plans for their students. The future of those lives that will be touched by our classmates looks really bright! Abagail, I really love how creative you are and the way that you have incorporated games and activities to your lessons that get your students moving; this is really great to help in maintaining student engagement. Kayla's kindergarten class sounds like so much fun! I love the inclusion of interactive videos to get them excited in the lesson; I really liked her flowchart idea as well. Dakota's way of introducing the lesson was filled with excitement and that is such a great way to spark the students interest.
Everyone did a phenomenal job!!! This has been really helpful to me as I will definitely be borrowing some of the ideas learned from my classmates. I'm so excited as we get closer to actually teaching!!
