Reflection on teaching lesson

Like always when I begin planning a lesson I get all of these ideas and try to squeeze so many of them into one lesson. This lesson was no exception. After viewing a typical social studies lesson I saw how the students were unengaged in the material. Many students talked with their neighbors, looked around the room, played with objects in their desk and begin to fall asleep. My goal in designing this lesson was for the students to meet the intended objectives and for the students to be excited and engaged in the activities.

Upon arriving at the school to teach I felt very confident in my lesson. I felt that students would benefit from the lesson and learn a lot from the readings, while also enjoy sharing their ideas with each other and writing a candidate’s speech. Before beginning I set two goals for myself. First, I would make sure to give lots of positive praise to the students and communicate with them how much I liked their ideas and their behaviors. Secondly, if my lesson didn’t go as planned I would not flip out but go with the flow. This last goal is very hard for me because I am a type A person and like things to go as planned.

As I began my lesson the students seemed excited to voice what they knew about leaders and the government. They did a great job at defining both of these terms. Next, students were given a handout to read. I complied this reading from two third-grade social studies books and I wrote a few paragraphs on my own. As students read aloud many of them read clearly and fluently but others seemed to struggle with some of the words. This surprised me as I felt the readings were on a third-grade reading level. After each section of reading the students shared their ideas with their neighbors and then we discussed these ideas aloud and I wrote what they knew under the L in the KWL chart. I felt by combining reading and discussions students were gaining new knowledge yet voicing their understandings of the content and opinions on their readings.

Not surprisingly I noticed that we began to run out of time and I really wanted students to get a chance to write a campaign speech and explain why they are good leaders and why they are a great candidate for a certain position (either Mayor, Governor, Senator, President, etc). Fortunately Ms. Blakemore informed me that the students had already copied down their homework assignment and if I ran a few minutes over that would be okay. To accommodate I read the last section of the reading and asked students to follow along. Also, I shortened their discussion time with their neighbors to about two minutes. This seemed to help a lot. Lastly I passed out the directions for the assessment task and explained to students what I wanted them to do. Students were so eager and excited about writing a candidate’s speech. I gave students about eleven to twelve minutes to complete this assignment. While walking around the room I realized that students needed more time to complete this assignment. Unfortunately I was overtime so I instructed students to wrap up their speeches and allowed five students to share aloud their speeches.

Overall I was very happy with my lesson but there are a few things I would do differently. First, I would allow students more time to complete their campaign speeches. All students seemed to love writing a speech, yet many of them did not have time to complete their speech in class. Secondly, I felt I gave lots of positive praise by giving the groups Popsicle sticks and constantly praising students. However, I would be sure next time to not continuously say “Good Job” but also use other words of encouragement such as, “I like how Sarah is sitting up straight and listening to Ethan read. Thank you Sarah!” Lastly, I would work on revising the reading so that it does not give students as much difficulty. I was very happy with myself for not panicing when I was running low on time. Instead I accommidated and I am very proud of myself for that. After teaching several lessons over the course of the last eleven months, I have become more confident in myself as a teacher and every time I step in front of a group of students to teach I feel I continue to learn and grow. This lesson made me very excited about teaching third grade this coming fall :)