The Leap from Theory to Practice
Greetings internet friends,
This is my Activity 3B for week 3 of my Content Area Instructional Assessment course at National University. So far, I wrote a week long lesson plan, took one of those lessons and planned it out in detail, and then taught it to a few friends. Putting the lesson into practice helped me assess how well my plans work in the real world. I learned a few things along the way.
My assessments told me a few things. While I should plan my lessons to fit into a one hour block, I should also plan on the schedule to change and adapt according to my students needs. The warm up activity and PowerPoint presentation went faster than expected. The activity where they find examples of the separation of powers within the Constitution was a little beyond their ability. The older members of the class had no problems but the younger ones struggled. The grammar of the Constitution was hard for them to decipher. This caused me to switched up my plan and lead them through the activity as one large group rather than have them do it by themselves in small groups. I expected the ebb and flow of the class to vary, but I did not expect it to be so hard for them to extrapolate information from the Constitution. Hindsight is 20/20. Looking back now, I should have realized it would be more efficient to guide them through it to begin with.
This means that in my planning I must plan extra time to help my students become fluent in the language of the the historical documents they study, especially the writings of the Founding Fathers. I want them to read the actual Constitution, Federalist and Anti-Federalist papers. I want them to read and understand what they say rather than rely on others to tell it to them.
I also need to become more efficient at planning my lessons. I need to write them must faster than I do. Currently, I am spending an hour or two planning each hour long lesson. When I start teaching Direct Instruction classes in January I will need to write them faster. Otherwise I will overstretch myself. I currently am busy from 6 am - 5 pm with work. A few times a week I stay late to grade papers. I start my National University work and personal chores in the evening around 6 pm. Throwing an extra 5-10 hours a week will pack my schedule too tight. Each lesson I write familiarizes me more with good teaching practices, and I know I’ll get faster with practice, but this reinforced the importance of speeding up the process.
As for the teaching itself, the experience reinforced how the implementation of a lesson will almost always vary in practice because the students will be different every time. As long as I am leading my students to learn the course material that is fine, but it could be very easy to get off topic or not cover enough material without planning properly.
