Blog #3

This week has gone really well (except for the fact that I have a VERY bad cold). Anyway, I wasn’t really sure what to talk about: LFS, lesson plans, classroom management… But, I think I want to focus on how all of these things come together = aka a very good day and I had one this week!
My very good day was Tuesday, when I started a new lesson on personification. I started planning my lesson by thinking of how I could differentiate (which is one of my downfalls). I tried to incorporate movement, writing, drawing, and speaking. So, then I thought about LFS and I thought: review.
My lesson started with a poem by Shel Silverstein called “The Furniture Bash.” I chose that poem because it is fun and many of my kids love Shel Silverstein and also because the poem has tons of personification. I read the poem out loud and had students guess what we were going to learn about. Many of them guessed personification right away (which helped me gage their prior learning). Then we moved on to a Frayer. I had already used a Frayer twice and the kids really liked it and I like the routine of doing mostly the same thing. I could tell that the lower-level students really liked the Frayers because they could use examples and draw and I think they liked the routine of using the same graphic organizers again. It gave them a sense of ownership.
After the Frayers, I used different poems on the board and we went through them with the students raising one of three different colored papers to indicated simile, metaphor, or personification in the poem. I had never used that activity before but I really liked it because I could see what each individual student was thinking. Then we moved on to previewing three different poems in the text book that we were going to be working with that day. For my lower level classes, we just read the poems out loud and went over difficult vocabulary but for my academic classes we went more in-depth with the poems. From there I made a graphic organizer for students to fill out with similes, metaphors, and personification from the poems (“Students can’t learn without graphic organizers!” – LFS). I gave directions (very detailed with examples – I’m getting better at it!) then students had time to complete the graphic organizer with their partners.
Our last task was a creative representation of a time in one of the poems when the poet used personification. I made an example of a sun painting a picture of a desert because the poem said, “The Sun paints the desert…” The students had so much fun with their projects and I wish I could show all of them to you.
I didn’t have too many classroom management problems because I kept the class flowing. Which reminds me, I finally experienced flow in my class! It was great!
So, I guess the moral of my story today is that I had never realized how much “stuff” goes in to planning and performing a lesson! But I’m starting to catch on and it’s going well!
This week has gone really well (except for the fact that I have a VERY bad cold). Anyway, I wasn’t really sure what to talk about: LFS, lesson plans, classroom management… But, I think I want to focus on how all of these things come together = aka a very good day and I had one this week!
My very good day was Tuesday, when I started a new lesson on personification. I started planning my lesson by thinking of how I could differentiate (which is one of my downfalls). I tried to incorporate movement, writing, drawing, and speaking. So, then I thought about LFS and I thought: review.
My lesson started with a poem by Shel Silverstein called “The Furniture Bash.” I chose that poem because it is fun and many of my kids love Shel Silverstein and also because the poem has tons of personification. I read the poem out loud and had students guess what we were going to learn about. Many of them guessed personification right away (which helped me gage their prior learning). Then we moved on to a Frayer. I had already used a Frayer twice and the kids really liked it and I like the routine of doing mostly the same thing. I could tell that the lower-level students really liked the Frayers because they could use examples and draw and I think they liked the routine of using the same graphic organizers again. It gave them a sense of ownership.
After the Frayers, I used different poems on the board and we went through them with the students raising one of three different colored papers to indicated simile, metaphor, or personification in the poem. I had never used that activity before but I really liked it because I could see what each individual student was thinking. Then we moved on to previewing three different poems in the text book that we were going to be working with that day. For my lower level classes, we just read the poems out loud and went over difficult vocabulary but for my academic classes we went more in-depth with the poems. From there I made a graphic organizer for students to fill out with similes, metaphors, and personification from the poems (“Students can’t learn without graphic organizers!” – LFS). I gave directions (very detailed with examples – I’m getting better at it!) then students had time to complete the graphic organizer with their partners.
Our last task was a creative representation of a time in one of the poems when the poet used personification. I made an example of a sun painting a picture of a desert because the poem said, “The Sun paints the desert…” The students had so much fun with their projects and I wish I could show all of them to you.
I didn’t have too many classroom management problems because I kept the class flowing. Which reminds me, I finally experienced flow in my class! It was great!
So, I guess the moral of my story today is that I had never realized how much “stuff” goes in to planning and performing a lesson! But I’m starting to catch on and it’s going well!