This weekend I took some time to write up my plans for the lessons I'm teaching this week. I didn't use the official format, but I read through everything and wrote notes about how I was going to delver the lessons based on what I know about our students.
I felt more prepared this morning than I have on other Monday mornings, with plans all done for the whole week. The frustrating part was that, despite my preparations the lessons today were only so-so. I taught literacy and science. We are continuing on our second week of questioning in literacy, and i could tell I was loosing the students' interest during the lesson. In science, we got through the first part of the lesson and as we were debriefing from their initial observations and explorations, it became clear that they already knew A LOT about magnets and the second half of the lesson would be a waste of time. I ended up changing the plan and using some promethium tools to review what students already knew instead of wasting time with the activities I had originally planned.
Do you think there was a way to avoid teaching the students content they had already mastered? Even if your solution wouldn't "work" in your current situation, I'm curious about how you would have prevented it. Being able to re-group on the fly and adapt your plans is an impressive skills for a new teacher. Congratulations on being so responsive.
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