I am sure I have had to change lesson
plans while teaching, but I am having trouble remembering a lot of
examples. One example I do remember, happened while I was teaching a
genre study and the students were analyzing poetry. I had the
students gathered on the carpet and we had read over three poems and
analyzed each poem's layout and structure. After that, I had students
break into groups and read a poem as a group and come up with three
things to say about the poem's layout and structure. After students had
worked in groups, I had the whole group come back together and we began to
talk about each individual poem and groups shared. About half way
through the groups, I seemed to be losing the interest of students. I
could tell they were getting restless. I decided while teaching to
cut the sharing short and directed students to move on to the next
task at their desks. For the sharing, I could tell students were getting what I wanted them to out of the lesson.
Another time I made an adjustment to my
lesson plan while teaching happened during my TPA. During my third
lesson I could tell that some of the students were struggling with
the concept. I decided to pull a small math group
together. Students could choose to work on their own or they could
come to the small group to get help. I had a few students that I did
not give a choice. I knew those students were not able to work
alone at that point.
I think it is important to be able to
read the students during the lesson,to see if you as the teacher are
losing them, and make adjustments as necessary. Adjustments need to
be made at times due to the pacing of the lesson as well and time constraints.
Your post today is evidence of your advanced teaching skills, Nicole. That ability to be nimble, to respond to students' attention levels based on your careful observations of their engagement, is testament to your confidence and preparedness. Plenty of teachers (new and veteran) would soldier on with a planned lesson because the alternatives weren't obvious (lack of planning) or because they aren't engaged with the material themselves and don't see viable options for going off message.
ReplyDeleteIn Julie's post, she wrote about staying with a lesson longer than expected because her first graders were so "into it". This is a different example of the same point--taking our students' engagement temperature throughout a lesson, and responding in meaningful ways with substantive adjustments is a higher-order teaching skill. I'm not kidding, even though I'm using a lot of jargon :-)
The other observation I want to make in response to your post is that "kid-watching" is a valid assessment tool--again, your attentiveness to the role of assessment in teaching and learning is notable.
p.s. How do you make paragraphs in your posts?