Lesson Plans

Teacher Tips


This Video is an example of the decision making a teacher has to go through in order to improve the students learning process. The best was to improve the students academic achievement is by creating the proper learning environment in class. The best way to maintain control of our instructional goals and objectives is by lesson planning. Lesson Planning must consider the students needs, interests and multiple intelligences. A lesson plan most take into consideration all of the factors that can jeopardize or make effective the learning process. So as part of my practice teaching lesson planning, I have selected the best Lesson plan created and the least effective Lesson plan. I will explain Why these two lesson plans are effective and least effective. To do this, I will divide the explanation into the 4 language skills : L/S and W/R.

Most effective Lesson

The February 11 2014 class was the most effective class of my practice. It was an expository paragraph writing class. Students showed interest in the Power point presentation. This presentation contained a compare and contrast and cause and effect activity. Students could orally produce and perform using the second language. The cause and effect topics were relevant to their reality and to the society they live in. Students could express their opinion towards school dropouts, anorexia, drug and alcohol abuse, etc… They could also experience history facts during the compare and contrast activity (Rosa parks and Martin Luther King). The class could aim the 4 language arts of listening/speaking and reading/writing skills. After the activity, students brainstorm to write their own expository paragraphs. The class was instructionally effective but what made it exceptional was the environment created in class. Students could experience values and L2 learning in a memorable scenario that made this class the most effective.
 

• L/S: Students performance in speaking skills were very effective during this input and output activity. Students participated in the L2 and expressed their opinions in different pictures and social topics. Students could be exposed to the autonomy of the English Language to share their opinions in class over several topics. They were exposed to an environment in which they could debate orally with their classmates. By taking a stand to defend their opinions, they developed leadership skills during the usage of oral discourse.

• W: After this topic discussion students were able to brainstorm and write a draft of their own social topics for their expository paragraphs. Students had practice the writing process during previous classes. They had acquired brainstorming and drafting skills before this class. The only practice the students needed was practice to develop more elaborated topics for the writing of their expository paragraph. This activity of critical thinking took the students into a higher level of thesis statement development. 

• R: An Expository paragraph of one of these topics was projected for the students to read and analyze. By giving the students an expository paragraph example, students could read out loud the paragraph during the class discussion. The content of the paragraph was informative and the topic was based in the importance of reading. So besides reading , students could learn the reasons of why reading is important.

 Use of Technology:

This class was also the most effective class with the usage of technology. Students could interact with the content of the power point presentation and the projector. They could see pictures and graphics that captivated their attention. The activity was accomplished with the usage of technology.

• Power Point Presentation of the Class

Least effective Lesson

Students will identify Figurative language in a given song lyric

I assigned the students to identify Figurative Language techniques in given song lyrics. After identifying them, students had to analyze the authors purpose and literal meaning of each technique. Students were not prepared to accomplish this task so soon during the unit.

 

Students showed to struggle to understand which examples were actually simile and metaphor examples. They did not show any difficulty during the rest of the figurative language techniques. It was difficult for them to differentiate the two different "Like" in context to recognize similes. Students tended to identify every sentence containing "is" or "are" as metaphors. It was a matter of extending the metaphor and simile explanation two more days. After the explanation being accommodated in their schema, students started providing examples of their own and were able to identify similes and metaphors with no struggles. To improve the teaching of this goal in the future, I would consider assessing the student’s domain of the material before exposing them to new material or activities. In the future, even if the students understand the material, I will mark the difference between common sentences and similes and metaphors. This will be done to make sure students can jump into the creating stage.

 

W: Students had to rewrite the figurative language examples from the songs, but students were struggling with identifying the figurative language techniques.

R: Students had to read the Figurative language examples from the song lyrics and figure out authors message.

L/S: Students had to orally share their works

It is always important to evaluate the level of difficulty of a lesson before considering giving it to the students. Pervious assessments most had been done before this class in order to evaluate if the students were ready to go from the conceptualization phase into the application phase. The next day students were introduce with authors purpose and literal meaning and some other exercises that would help them identify figurative language techniques.