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!
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.
