Finally, a Lesson on it's feet!

This post will take you through my journey teaching a lesson plan I've worked on over the course of two classes.

(If the format looks funny, it's because this is copied from a PowerPoint presentation.)

Satire unit: day 2

A study from plan to implementation

The plan

•Teach Satirical analysis through the use of video

•Step 1: Students answer the warm-up question in partners

•Step 2: Teacher models analysis of a short video

•Step 3: Students analyze 2 more short videos in groups

•Step 4: Students will share their findings with the class

In action – warm-up

•The idea: get students informally talking about satire and then share their thoughts with the class.

•The reality: students talked with each other, but did not want to share out their answers.

•The solution: I will call on each set of partners to share one of their ideas with the class.

On the projector:

Turn and talk to your partner to answer the following question:

What is satire?

In action – teacher model

•The idea: I model analysis for the students using the short video linked below

•The reality: After my model, even though it was precise and thorough, the students were not as prepared to analyze their own videos as I had hoped.

•The solution: Watch the video twice.  The first time, I have the students watch without any introduction.  I ask for their impressions and thoughts.  Then, we watch it again and I turn their impressions into analysis using the satirical devices they learned the day before.

In action – group work

•The Idea: have students begin to analyze works of satire in groups in order to help each other figure out the process.

•Reality: Having the students work in groups was a good call.  They were able to help scaffold each other toward mastery of the skills.

•Solution: This worked well.  But, next time I will be more intentional about how I create the groups of students – putting lower achieving students together with those who are higher achieving in order to maximize the learning potential in each group.

Video 1:

Video 2:

In action – class discussion

•The idea: Groups share their analysis with the rest of the class so that all students benefit from each other’s knowledge and work.

•Reality: Again, I had trouble getting groups to share out, similar to the situation in the warm-up.

•Solution: Similar to the warm-up, I will call on each group to share one device they found in one of the videos.  This way, every group contributes to the discussion and I will get an idea of how the students are progressing in their skill mastery.

In action - closure

•The idea: Prepare students for the next parts of the unit by previewing ideas, concepts, and expectations.

•Reality: I felt like giving the students information in this way was not as effective as it could have been.  By the time we got to the end of the lesson, it seemed that student’s brains’ could not compute any more information.

•Solution: build this preview into the rest of the lesson and use the discussion as an exit ticket.  Each group must share something in order to leave at the end of the period.

Reflect

Support for English Language Learners:

•After reflection, my lesson needs more support for ELL students

•I am going to add more visuals and pictures to the introduction powerpoint

•As previously stated, I will be more intentional with how I group students to support my ell students

•During group work, I will check in with groups containing ELL students and ask honestly how they are progressing with the concepts.

I feel like I’ve been staring at this lesson plan for years.  And the more I stare at it, the more it looks like a blurry combination of words that are meaningless.  But after teaching this lesson again, I remember how much I love it and how much fun I have teaching satire.  This lesson is such a great introduction to satire and now that I’ve been working with it for two classes I feel like it’s almost ready to be used in my classroom and in context of the larger unit that includes reading Huckleberry Finn.

In conclusion…

•Lesson plans are never really complete

•With as much as I’ve learned, I’m only just beginning to feel confident in my abilities

•I need to focus more on how to include scaffolds for ELL students

•I have to strive to include informal assessments at every stage of both my lessons and my units.

•I feel like I’m on my way!