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Lesson Plan Evolution
Lesson Plan Evolution
This section looks back on my lesson planning and teaching practices from the last two years. My Athena lesson plans and my virtual round videos are accompanied by reflections, observations, and questions that help make sense of my experience in planning out these activities.
Much like evolution, in reality, the leftmost picture is not the final evolution of ourselves as professionals or as humans.
Nevertheless, there is some progress that I can track.
Designing Lessons for Ninth Grade English
Designing Lessons for Ninth Grade English
In my first year of ever teaching, at the Urban School of San Francisco, I had a set English curriculum to follow. Though the pace of classes and the unit were well-established, I was always encouraged to create my own lesson plans and assessments.
Still, starting off a co-teacher and occasionally leading class at Trinity school was different. My mentor has a plethora of activities she has created through the last 30 years of teaching at Trinity, but there was no set curriculum or pace for the ninth grade curriculum. With great power comes great responsibility, so it was finally up to me to create my own unit and lesson plans.
This was my first recorded class and it was captured as one of the few moments in my first Freshman fall when I was leading a class.
This is the 9th grade class I co-teach with my mentor. We are reading Old School by Tobias Wolff and in this class we were talking about Ayn Rand’s fictional cameo in the book. Seldom do I run discussions, but I was lucky enough to do so on a day when they were excited to talk about this author. My goal was to help them understand the narrator’s psyche through the author’s references to other authors/literature.
Lingering Questions
Lingering Questions
- How can I build on my endurance to keep the students interested until the end of the class period?
- How can I practice avoiding leading questions?
- Classforward Notes, October 2018
Coming up with Discussion Questions
Coming up with Discussion Questions
I had previously felt comfortable coming up with discussion questions until I shifted into this more teacher-led discussion style rather than student-led.
For the majority of my first year and still into this year, I focused on coming up with a strong discussion question.
Black et al. would refer to this as a, "'big question': an open question, or a problem-solving task, which can set the scene for a lesson, either by evoking a broad-ranging discussion or by prompting small group discussions, so involving many students." (p 35, 2003)
I teetered between creating a leading question that fed the students my own interpretations and creating abstract questions that needed further clarification.
How could I edit myself so that students could understand what I was getting at?
Speaking with colleagues is helpful, but ultimately, I need to know exactly were I want my students to get to in order for me to lead them there. Lessoning planning and unit planning become absolute essentials when it comes to instructional strategies.
Preparation, Preparation, Preparation: An Ode to Unit Plans
Preparation, Preparation, Preparation: An Ode to Unit Plans
Over the course of my first year teaching at Trinity, I went through multiple different kinds of approaches to lesson planning. Since the first year was mainly observational, I would talk to my mentor to get a better understanding of her approaches to the classroom. After collaborating on a lesson plan or handout, we'd execute it in the classroom and plan accordingly for the next class. This year, I've been engaging more with the Backward Design approach to the classroom, figuring out what my students need to know by the end of the year so that I can scaffold my way towards it.
One of the hardest things for me to do was figure out the timing, quantity, and quality components of the inquiry project that I could incorporate into the classroom. I will go on to mention this at other points, but one objective that felt omnipresent was to match the teaching philosophy of the school. I found myself wanting to experiment with multiple progressive methods in the classroom that would challenge students in ways that are not necessarily a priority at the institution. But in this case, experimentation is the cart and unit planning is the horse. The horse must always come first.
In my second year at Trinity and first full year of developing my own lesson plans, I needed to take some time to investigate what the implicit goals of the English Curriculum at Trinity are composed of before adequately incorporating my inquiry project into the classroom.
Backward Planning
Backward Planning
"The logic of backward design signals the importance of 'thinking like an assessor' by placing Stage 2 (determining acceptable evidence) before Stage 3 (planning teaching and learning activities). By considering in advance the assessment evidence needed to validate that the desired results have been achieved, teaching becomes more purposeful and focused. Also, with clarity about what constitutes evidence that students have achieved desired results, teachers have a consistent framework within which they can make modification for their students' readiness levels, interests, and learning preferences" (McTighe & Tomlinson, p 59. 2006)
Backward planning my Julius Caesar Rhetoric Unit allowed for me to precisely articulate what my goals were for the students. If I can organize my thoughts into a planning template, I could more easily understand my class's core takeaways. Below, to the left, you will see a template that captures the steps involved in backward designing. Instead of focusing on the activities or lesson plans that one would do tomorrow, the educator is supposed to begin with the end results and rewind until they've gotten to the present. The goal is to center students and have them be the subject of our classes.
Students will understand that...
Students will know...
Students will be able to...
Once this has been established, there is room for experimentation with specific activities, lessons, or assignments, but more importantly, differentiation. Differentiation means students get customized instructions or at times assignments based off of their own progress (McTighe & Tomlinson, 2006). Not only does each student have a different background with the subject at hand, but they work at their own pace and resonate with different aspects of the lessons. Especially with the benefit of small classes in private schools, it is crucial that we tailor our teachings to our students.
Backward Design Template (McTighe and Wiggins)
My own Rhetoric Unit Plan for Julius Caesar
JC RHETORIC UNIT PLAN .pdfUnderstanding Student Motivation
Understanding Student Motivation
I will speak more about student engagement in Assessment and Feedback, but this is to say that as we plan out the course content and trajectory of the school year, we must also keep in mind our students' motivations in mind.
At the start of the class, some of my students expressed interest in having class outside because it was a nice day out. I agreed with the sentiment, but because I wanted to validate our communal urge to my mentor, I took the opportunity to have them conjure up an argument. If they could argue that it is essential for us to have class outside in order to understand the text, then I would let them go outside for the second half after using the board. We ended up going out for the last few minutes, but by then, they were already wilting figures under the sun, so the discussion evaporated.
This is the most excited they've ever been for one of my classes, and as noticeable, the energy promptly dipped once the actual class started. It's not the first time I notice my palpable nerves, but I would like to pinpoint the source of it all. Even if I STILL feel this anxiety at the front of the classroom, I'd like a way to at least hide it because it's also contagious for the students.
- Classforward notes, April 2019
Surveying the Students
Surveying the Students
Though at this time of the year I was not completely aware of what the subject of my inquiry method would be, I was curious about what inspired, or motivated, students in general. I thought it was the right time to experiment with making surveys and understanding another side of the students I encountered everyday. In my survey about inspiration, I mostly leave the door open to their answers, but I also ask about the type of environment that is most conducive to inspiration.
Especially in conjunction with this year's surveys, it is refreshing to look back at some of these responses and see how a student, we will call her Wendy Windham, was inspired by a metaphor...
“I read a lot of Roald Dahl when I was younger, and there was one text where he describes inspiration like this: long octopus-like tendrils extending from your head that wave around and grab onto ideas floating in the air. So I guess that’s what inspiration means to me -- when one of these tendrils catches an idea and brings it back to me.”
Metaphors are words attempting to translate feeling through physicality. The senses that they refer to conjure up connotations that fully define a concept for us.
This student remembers a specific visual of cerebral tendrils reaching for ideas as equivalent to inspiration or creativity. I wonder what the odds of her remembering the meaning behind this visual if it were devoid of this imagery... This is what I seek to explore in my inquiry project.
Incorporating my Inquiry into my Lesson Plans
Incorporating my Inquiry into my Lesson Plans
At the start of the class, I had them think back on the earliest story they can remember hearing somebody tell them. This proved to be difficult for them because of how open-ended or general it felt to them. We spent more time than I would have liked to clarifying the prompt. Afterwards, we went on to a memory activity where I read a list of words while the students listened (without taking notes). The intention was for them to remember as many words as possible. I also found a lesson plan about memory in the NYTimes, Lesson Plan | I Remember: Teaching About the Role of Memory Across the Curriculum, which brought me to a documentary about a Native American woman who was the last to know her language and was transcribing that language into a dictionary. Instead of following this lesson plan, I incorporated the documentary and the separate memory activity into my lesson plan for The Odyssey.
Once I said “go,” I had them jot down the words they remembered. All of the words had to do with sleep -- ie. bed, drowsy, rest, pillow, dream, etc -- but "sleep" itself was not a word that was part of that list. Yet, all of them wrote down "sleep." This was an example of false recall, intended to show how our brains use associations to fill in the blanks to the point that we end up misremembering (Roediger & McDermott, 1995).
Following this memory game, we went into a discussion about The Odyssey, asking why the dinner guests in this scene want to forget or misremember. We slightly mentioned the meta-qualities of this being an epic, and originally having been an orally shared story. I forgot to mention mnemonics as an added strategy that a storyteller may have needed in order to remember key moments in the text.
In preparation for this lesson about memory, I found a lesson plan in the NYTimes where I found a lesson plan about memory based off of
In the latter end of the period, we started wondering “who can afford to forget?” This led to showing a snippet of a larger documentary about a Native American woman who is the last in her community to fluently speak the Wukchumni language. We watched only a few minutes of it before going back to that question that addresses the privilege of intentionally forgetting over the fate of forgetting. I was hoping for the video to open up their ideas about storytelling, remembering, and what it means to practice your culture in order to keep it alive for decades to come.
- Classforward Notes, October 2019
In my Findings section, I analyze these outcomes.
Lingering Questions
Lingering Questions
- How can better flow from one activity to the next while minimizing squirrely behavior?
- How can I lock into a precise discussion question that invites deep insights rather than superficial observations?
- Especially when so much of the class time goes from comment to comment, what kinds of data collection tools / exit tickets are fast but elucidatory?
- How far do you lean into, or how often do you involve your inquiry project in your own classrooms?
- How do you make sure to go back to themes you’ve already talked about/make a through line from class to class?
- How can my inquiry question be more polished up in order to minimize a general scope of film studies?
- Classforward Notes, October 2019
Remember or Forget, Place Your Bet The Odyssey Book 10.pdfFollow up handout to the memory activity where we enter a philosophical discussion about memories and culture.
Reflecting on my Teaching Practices
Reflecting on my Teaching Practices
Self-critical inclinations may exist as long as one hopes to hone their craft, but the ability to acknowledge successes, no matter how large or small, is equally indispensable. The first time I ever taught, all I wanted to hear by the end of an observation were criticisms. What went wrong? How can I improve on x, y, z? I didn't realize, however, that I was mental filtering -- focusing only on these attributes of myself and using them as definers rather than encouragement.
Today, I hope to celebrate the small successes and be more proactive about my preparation for classes in the long-term. Just as I advise my students to have confidence in themselves, I, too, must trust in my capabilities. After months of learning how to speak more affirmatively about myself and the students, I have also gotten more comfortable instructing my students. Focusing on being a warm demander has reminded me that precise directions and customized encouragement propels students to enjoy challenging work (Alexander, 2016).
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