Chapter 7: Lesson Preparation

Analyze

This week as a class we looked over the idea of preparation in the classroom.  I truly believe that being an effective teacher (not just a teacher) is one of the most demanding careers that someone can take on.  We work tirelessly in order to learn the academic portion of the content that we teach as well as effective pedagogy to teach it.  Teachers work both as psychologists, field experts and mentors all in a single day’s work.  I recently finished year one in the classroom and I had consistently heard that “you will learn more in year one than college can ever teach you” and that statement could not be more true.  In my first year I was able to learn so much about time management.  Not only is knowing what to do important, but knowing how to apply those skills is equally important.  Many teachers point directly to best practice and pedagogical tools when they speak of lesson planning but my group partner made a great point about planning for student behavior and possible interventions and how effective preparations can lead to a more efficiently managed classroom.  Things like this are great examples of knowing both the what and the how.  There are two types of lessons that can broadly overlap most classroom instruction, whole group lessons and small group lessons.  Slavin details seven important parts to an effective whole group, or direct instruction lesson in his text.  These seven steps include, state learning objectives, review prior knowledge, present new material, conduct learning probes, provide independent practice, assess performance, and provide additional practice and review (Slavin, 185).  Each of these steps is very critical in becoming an intentional teacher, something Slavin believes should be the goal for teachers.  Each of these steps require additional prep time for the teacher.  These steps are all very useful items and must be given the proper attention that they require.  The intentional teacher must be able to take each one of these seven tasks and decide where to place certain activities, as well as execute them after planning.

Reflect

When I read through this particular chapter I was consistently reminded of things that I need to be doing better in my classroom.  The process of starting at a clearly stated objective and moving to new information and wrapping up with independent practice requires a lot of preparation that I was unaware of as a first year teacher.  The biggest one of the seven steps is conducting learning probes in my opinion.  No matter if you call it learning probes or formative assessment it is simply a tool that teachers must use in order to gauge whether or not the students learned what you intended to teach.  Effective learning probes allow us to decide if we did a good enough job with the material that we taught.  Having clearly stated objectives is your road map to determine how well you did in the classroom or on the particular lesson.  I learned from this chapter that in order to relay information more effectively I have to start with clearly stated objectives and end at a well thought out learning probe.  As a young teacher I consistently think that there has to be a curtain of mystery between my students and the teacher jargon that goes into teaching them, things like learning targets, objectives, methods and assessments.  As I have reflected on this past year I have seen that to be wrong.  In the coming school year I want to be able to show my kids the standards; I’ve even put a copy of them in my new syllabi.  In order to be a better teacher I intend on starting each unit with a clearly stated objective, something of a roadmap to where we are going.  I want my kids to know that we are going to be learning about this in this certain time frame because it is standard number so and so.  Allowing students to see the method to what goes into instruction will hopefully open them up to the big picture, rather than me simply spitting out dates and facts that may or may not be on a test.  This chapter didn’t show me the importance of preparation, but rather, new tools to help my preparation become that much better, both for me as a professional and for my students.