Monday, November 5, 2012
lesson plan adjustments
I find myself constantly adjusting my lesson plans as I teach. When planning my lessons I always assume things will take longer than they do, but plan for extra material in case it takes them less time. An example of this is when I was teaching a science lesson a few weeks back. The students were very engaged in the discussion so I had a choice: cut the lesson short to finish the assessment piece or continue the lesson without time to complete the assessment. I chose to continue the discussion because the students were asking and answering higher order thinking questions. I then continued my lesson the next day, starting by summarizing what we had done and talked about the day before. The students still did well on the assessment and they got more out of the conversation because I was flexible with my lesson plan.
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Your ability to make a choice between staying "on message" or digressing is the beauty of a self-contained classroom. When we have our students all day, we can adjust as needed and pick up loose ends another time. The benefit to students is powerful--in this case, you extended their genuine engagement, thus increasing the learning experience and sending the message that thinking and talking are valued in your classroom.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if you've thought about the implications of starting flexible grouping for math (I think that's the subject your grouping for), when you'll have to coordinate with other teachers for the group switch. While this makes sense to support differentiation, it also takes away some of the flexibility. We should ask Nicole about how she's liking discrete teaching periods vs. long chunks of time with her students now that she's in a middle school setting.
Are you reading this, Nicole?
Now that I am in middle school, the time to teach a math lesson has shortened for me. When I was teaching in 4th grade, the students switched rooms for math, but we got 90 minutes to teach. The first hour was for a whole group lesson and work time and the last 1/2 hour was for differentiation. I liked that situation better than I do middle school because now we only have 50 minutes to teach math. The time seems to go so fast and can feel rushed. There is little flexibility to continue a lesson longer than planned. You could perhaps, but then you would have to make up time the next day and the other classes would be at a different place in the lesson. After talking with my cooperating teacher it seems like she has to stay on pace with the lessons for the most part to fit everything in that needs to be taught for the year. I often think about small groups in this situation and I am trying to envision how I would implement them if this were my own classroom. I would love to try this in middle school! My cooperating teacher does not have any small groups because she has not really found a way to make it work.
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