What we learned about being a teacher:
It takes a lot to plan a lesson as a 7th grade history teacher. More than we thought. There is so much to take into consideration, and lots of planning to be done. The process is very important, as is the product. For instance, in order to plan for a lesson, you must first determine where each student belongs, whether it be the approaching standard, at standard, or above standard. Then, you must review the standards for 7th graders, and begin to plan your product. In this case, it didn't really matter, but it is good to make it engaging and easy to do. There are many things to be covered by the unit. Then, you must plan the preassessment, which will tell you where each student belongs and help you group them accordingly. You must also create a big idea and several essential questions to guide the learning. We chose a KWL in this case, because it tells us what the students' interests are in the topic. It also tells us how are plan was afterward, and how we can improve it for next year's class. We then chose several videos relating to the topic, as a way to give the students some hands-on activity and notes, that they can refer to. Then, you must teach, and then send the students off to do research and other assignments, and then you must group them. For this, we chose groups of 3: one from each level. Then, you must have them finish the PowerPoint, present it, and then grade it accordingly. There was also the timeline and research for us. There are also other factors to take into consideration, such as making sure the students get as much out of it as possible. Which is why, of all the things I learned, I definitely learned that process is almost as important as the final product. Besides this, we learned that co-teaching is much easier than doing it alone, depending on who you are with. In this scenario, I really enjoyed co-teaching, but it was hard work. For one thing, you cannot cut corners: you and your co-teacher must do everything together, and find a way to bounce off each other. One person cannot do one thing while someone does another: you both need to understand it, so you do everything together. One of the reasons I like this project is because it really puts things into perspective! Now that I think of this plan and the overall structure of it, I feel that this plan of the unit would be very effective. Not only does it cover many to all of the 7th grade standards for the unit, but it has a reasonable approach, but it also presents information and the structure in an easy-to-understand way. It includes an easily-comprehensible big idea and easy to answer essential questions that are important none-the-less to the unit. The assignments are easy to do, and then we also have a project that demonstrates every students' understanding, and covers all aspects of the unit. The timeline is easy to read, and also contain many facts and notes that are important in the unit, the videos are well chosen and make sense. They contain lots of notes each. This is only the start! For those reasons about the project's structure, I feel our lesson would be very successful and students will be able to take a lot out of it. From a teacher's perspective, working with a co-teacher allowed us to understand everything, so we can bounce off each other's ideas in class to help the students understand. But I feel that there were some things we could improve now that I look back at it: while the process and the result were very well-organized and laid out, I would revise several things, including going deeper into the outline of the lesson plan, which would be important. Going deeper into the research and helping the students to understand will be key. I also would have covered more in the assessment, but we focused more on the contributions of the samurai. There were several factors we could have delved deeper into. But I thought overall, we did a great job creating a successful lesson that we were able to plan and organize ourselves. I'm glad we could learn (and teach) from a new perspective. I'm sure this lesson has great potential, because from a teacher's point of view, I thought we did well organizing the process and also (for the most part) covering the samurai and other standards.
It takes a lot to plan a lesson as a 7th grade history teacher. More than we thought. There is so much to take into consideration, and lots of planning to be done. The process is very important, as is the product. For instance, in order to plan for a lesson, you must first determine where each student belongs, whether it be the approaching standard, at standard, or above standard. Then, you must review the standards for 7th graders, and begin to plan your product. In this case, it didn't really matter, but it is good to make it engaging and easy to do. There are many things to be covered by the unit. Then, you must plan the preassessment, which will tell you where each student belongs and help you group them accordingly. You must also create a big idea and several essential questions to guide the learning. We chose a KWL in this case, because it tells us what the students' interests are in the topic. It also tells us how are plan was afterward, and how we can improve it for next year's class. We then chose several videos relating to the topic, as a way to give the students some hands-on activity and notes, that they can refer to. Then, you must teach, and then send the students off to do research and other assignments, and then you must group them. For this, we chose groups of 3: one from each level. Then, you must have them finish the PowerPoint, present it, and then grade it accordingly. There was also the timeline and research for us. There are also other factors to take into consideration, such as making sure the students get as much out of it as possible. Which is why, of all the things I learned, I definitely learned that process is almost as important as the final product. Besides this, we learned that co-teaching is much easier than doing it alone, depending on who you are with. In this scenario, I really enjoyed co-teaching, but it was hard work. For one thing, you cannot cut corners: you and your co-teacher must do everything together, and find a way to bounce off each other. One person cannot do one thing while someone does another: you both need to understand it, so you do everything together. One of the reasons I like this project is because it really puts things into perspective! Now that I think of this plan and the overall structure of it, I feel that this plan of the unit would be very effective. Not only does it cover many to all of the 7th grade standards for the unit, but it has a reasonable approach, but it also presents information and the structure in an easy-to-understand way. It includes an easily-comprehensible big idea and easy to answer essential questions that are important none-the-less to the unit. The assignments are easy to do, and then we also have a project that demonstrates every students' understanding, and covers all aspects of the unit. The timeline is easy to read, and also contain many facts and notes that are important in the unit, the videos are well chosen and make sense. They contain lots of notes each. This is only the start! For those reasons about the project's structure, I feel our lesson would be very successful and students will be able to take a lot out of it. From a teacher's perspective, working with a co-teacher allowed us to understand everything, so we can bounce off each other's ideas in class to help the students understand. But I feel that there were some things we could improve now that I look back at it: while the process and the result were very well-organized and laid out, I would revise several things, including going deeper into the outline of the lesson plan, which would be important. Going deeper into the research and helping the students to understand will be key. I also would have covered more in the assessment, but we focused more on the contributions of the samurai. There were several factors we could have delved deeper into. But I thought overall, we did a great job creating a successful lesson that we were able to plan and organize ourselves. I'm glad we could learn (and teach) from a new perspective. I'm sure this lesson has great potential, because from a teacher's point of view, I thought we did well organizing the process and also (for the most part) covering the samurai and other standards.