Week 3 Kudo's

Karen: I liked the idea of using a popular song for the students to look at and find simile's in. That will help get the students attention. Rebekah: This lesson sounds super fun! Anticipatory set is really good at attracting the attention of the students. I really liked how you fluctuated your voice to grab our attention, I can only imagine how your students would respond. Your lesson plan was also very well organized! Marley: I liked your lesson plan on the water cycle! It is so important for students to understand how the water cycle works. Keeping the students thinking in the lesson is a good idea. Group talking is a good idea also the experiment sounds super interesting. The third grade class that I just finished observing just started the water cycle and the teacher had them read the Magic School Bus: Wet All Over, a book about the water cycle to which she interlocked the students RTI time and their science lesson. It was interesting to listen to the students read this book but also make assumptions as to what condensation and evaporation meant. So your lesson plan brought me back to observing a bit. April: Love the story elements chart. It will help students remember what they have analyzed thus far. I like the anticipatory set because it helps bring the students minds to the story and they will focus on it better.

Week 2 Kudos

All the lesson plans for this week I felt were really well written out and presented. They have really improved since the first time we presented them. ~ Jacob: Your anticipatory set is really good. I really liked how you said something about the students thinking about different phrases their parents say. Children are around parents the most and really pick up on what they say. So I really liked that idea. ~ Alli H.: I really liked the idea of sequencing a book through pictures. That will really help students understand what is going on in a story. Your lesson plan was also very thorough. ~ Miranda: Role playing with change is a really good idea. That is something that will be very influential through out a child's life. The song is another great idea for students. ~ Scott: Holy cow your done with your lesson plans! WAY TO GO!! Your lesson plan was very thorough and I really liked your idea of the tree map and how it was hi lighted and laid out.

Praise's for the first presenters

Andrew~ I really liked your idea of having the students write a letter to someone in history that really set the tone for your subject. That is out of the box thinking and its really cool! Jessica~ You had a wonderful anticipatory set for your lesson plan! That is one thing on my lesson plans I am having fun with because if we can grab our students attention right from the start I feel they will be more interested in the lesson that we have planned. Ali G.~ Your lesson is on an amazing topic! I have to admit that I am not very good at recycling however its also something that we are beginning to hear more and more about. There are some really cool things that are made out of recycled things and I feel your lesson is one that is evolving with the global warming news we hear about. Tiffany~ The idea of a weather notebook is really cool because it will help the students understand the weather patterns a little bit more I feel. Angela~ Your topic is hard but if you understand art its probably easy. You done a really good job laying out your lesson plan and it is put together very well! I heard/seen some improvement from the previous time of presenting your lesson plan. :)

What do I want my students to know and do at the end of a unitWhat

When looking at my unit lesson plans so far to some it may seem quiet easy to teach kindergarten students how to write and the functions of writing. But to me I’m finding that it may be difficult. Not difficult as in oh my goodness I’m going to have a terrible time and be a terrible teacher but more from the stand point that for kindergarten age I need to make my lesson plans fun and engaging or the students will get bored out of their mind and we all know what happens when a student is bored at that age. They start to talk, and wander around the room and just blatantly not pay attention. So for my unit I am going over English Language Arts at the kindergarten level learning the structures of sentence writing. For this I want the students to know the importance of using capital letters and different punctuation marks for different phrases such as a period for a regular sentence and exclamation mark of the sentence they are writing they want the reader to know they are excited about and the question mark if the sentence is asking a question. What I want the students to do is to write out sentences that come to their mind or that follow a picture to help pick their brains on what to write. I will assess their growth by using the stories I ask them to write, this will also be a peer review type of thing because I want my students to learn as much as they can from each other because I feel that is the best way to learn!

Lesson Plan thoughts from group 1

The lesson plans that were presented in class were a HUGE help! Before the presentations I was literally freaking out because I wasn't sure where to even start with beginning my lesson plans. I know this is all a learning experience but I like to do things right the first time and presenting in class makes me nervous because I don't want to mess up. Everyone who presented had such a wide array of topics that it was really interesting. I really enjoyed Ali's presentation about recycling because this is something that we need to work on, who knew you could make things out of a recycled bottle such as planters. That was really interesting!

Difference between Formative assessment and performance based assessment

When we were in class we were going over different assessments that we may use with our students to make sure they are understanding what we are teaching. In class Dr. Steffes asked us to demonstrate a performance assessment which is and assessment that we use throughout the lesson to understand where our students are clicking at and then recognizing the ones that may need a little bit of our help. Formative assessment to me is the assessment we perform at the end of our lesson such as a test.

~Example 1 will be over performance based assessment:  When teaching the alphabet to a group of students I want to know how many are understanding the example pictures I am showing them with the letter A. So I will print off a worksheet that shows each student the exact pictures that I would show while the class would do it together. I will then ask the students to color in the pictures that start with the letter A as I read them aloud to the class. After the classwork is complete I will then look at the worksheets and see which students are understanding versus which students need a little extra help.

Example 2 over formative based assessment: After we have gone over every letter and the students have completed their worksheets at the end of the unit I will take each student individually back to a table. At this time I will have a paper that shows the letters and pictures we went over I will ask the student to match which picture goes with which letter. This will give me an understanding of how each student interpreted the lesson.

Marzano's 9 Strategies

As I begin to look at these nine Marzano strategies I begin to change the course of my thinking from what I feel is best for me to teach to my students but to what will the students benefit from the most. In class we talked about going over response cards and choral responses. These two things are really important to me because my main goal is to teach in the lower grades in elementary school. With the choral responses this is educational because we refer to them as brain breaks but in all reality we can make these brain breaks work for our lesson plan. There are so many motivational little dances and songs that engage students that when they are dancing along or singing along they don't even realize they are learning. Such as the video that I posted of apples and bananas. Another thing I found interesting was response cards. I find these so interesting because one I had never heard about them before, I always heard thumbs up and thumbs down but not the yes/no or red/green cards. This can really help you as a teacher look at the students and figure out which students are getting the concept versus which ones are on the fence or aren't getting it at all. That will help you better understand where you need to change your plan so that all students understand or if the students that are on the fence or not getting it need that extra one on one time to understand what you are teaching better.

Importance of writing objectives

I will be honest writing objective have been kinda confusing to me because of all the steps necessary. The ABCD’s help a little bit but I still get stumped every time I think of a writing objective. As time goes on I’m sure they will get easier, maybe it’s something that I will talk with my mentoring teachers about.... maybe they can give me some insight as to what helped them and see if it can help me.... 🤔 so for an example of a writing objective in my post it will be for students knowing how to efficiently make hard boiled eggs. So with students having an egg a pan of water and a burner I wish to have 95% accuracy within the class for making a hard boiled egg.

Flow charts and lesson plans

As we were going over the different flow charts and understanding what each was used for it occurred to me that this is something that is super interesting. I have always used flow charts when drafting a paper but never even thought about using them to help me plan out how or what I want to teach my class. Each of them has a specific purpose some I can see myself using more than others, but that also depends on what subject or grade I end up teaching. As someone who likes to be organized and follow a list of things or steps I want to follow the flow charts are going to come in super handy! This will eventually help me coordinate the amount of time for each topic and the subjects within that topic. I am getting excited to start my lesson plans and to understand a little more about teaching and it’s concepts!

Madeline Hunter Lesson Plan design

Before tonight I didn't understand the complexity teachers face when making lesson plans! There is a lot of work!!! As I was listening to the recording and attempting to fill out my lesson plan model there were a few things that I encountered. For me the hard parts come in the objectives and standards category, these two seem the most daunting because there are standards that the state places on the teacher that students must know. The objectives I think were hard because I have never been in an actual classroom setting such as being a para or anything yet so I found that hard. The easy part is coming up with the types of technology that I wish to use in my plans. The most impactful on the students will be the guided practice and the independent practice that they will be encountering. The lessor role I feel is the anticipatory set, yeah its fun to get the kids all into it but is that something that they will take with them and remember is my question. These are just my opinions on what I felt about different aspects of this lesson plan. But no matter which area is most important to the least important they all play a role in helping a student learn!