Step 9: Learning from experience

I'm pleased to report that I have officially finished planning and teaching my four small group lessons required for my integrated Term III project! As previously described, our main assignment this "quarter" is to plan one lesson each for math, literacy, science and social studies, and then to teach and subsequently analyze it. In brief, these were my topics for my lessons:

• Math: Finding the "missing part" in an addition story problem
• Literacy: Using context clues to figure out the meaning of an unfamiliar word
• Science: Engineers are problem solvers, and you can be one, too!
• Social Studies: What types of environments do people live in? How are they similar/different?

Even as recently as a month ago, the idea of coming up with these topics and a plan for how to teach them seemed incredibly daunting. I can honestly say I'm surprised by how naturally these lessons emerged simply out of my continued presence in the classroom and my sense of what my students needed to know/would enjoy learning. My Classroom Mentor has been very flexible about allowing me to choose and teach these on my own, and I am very grateful to the input of my Penn professors who helped me clarify and modify my ideas.


Our instructors all emphasized that the focus in these lessons should be on planning thoughtfully, and reflecting purposefully on our experiences. Fortunately, we will not be graded on our actual teaching. I say fortunately, because I will be the first to admit, some of my lessons did not go the way I expected! From timing (there is never enough of it!), to student responses (kids really do "say the darndest things!"), my lessons were anything but smooth; however they will certainly provide me with extensive material to reflect on! Each instructor has provided a slightly different framework through which we are supposed to examine our lessons, and together I think they are encouraging us to develop long-term skills in self-reflection, evaluation, and formative assessment. For example, in math, we are examining our lesson with regards to the discourse, tasks, norms and tools present; in social studies, the types of questions we ask take precedence; and in literacy, we are examining the alignment of our lessons with classroom objectives and state standards. All of these aspects are integral to student learning, and yet they are challenging to uphold in the fast paced-high environment of a school classroom. As I begin to look back on the videos I took of myself teaching, I realize how far I have to go in developing my practice, and feel grateful for this year of student teaching as an opportunity to really get the hands-on experience that teaching requires.