I taught my first lesson last week at SES. It was a writing lesson in which I had the students practice writing in their journals. The students are practicing how to write sentences. I noticed that some of the students can almost write full sentences, while others are still working on writing one word. For the journal writing exercise that I taught, I focused on using Humpty Dumpty as my topic. Ms. Patte always models the journal writing technique by first telling a story of some kind to the class, and as she tells the story she draws a picture about it. Since the class is focusing on telling stories from pictures, I found a picture of Humpty Dumpty and showed it to the class as I told the nursery rhyme story about it. As I spoke to the class, I drew my picture of Humpty Dumpty sitting on the wall, and I made sure to reinforce the fact that I needed to use at least 5 different colors in my drawing, and I needed to make sure to use as much detail as possible in my drawing . Creating details in the pictures the students draw is always something that Ms. Patte really focuses on during journal time. After, I finished my drawing, I told the students that I was going to write a sentence in my journal that matched the picture that I just drew. I asked the class to help me spell out the words in the sentence I wrote above the picture in my journal. By enunciating the letters in each of the words "Humpty Dumpty had a great fall," the students were able to help me spell out the words in my sentence. Next, I asked the students to draw a picture using as many details as possible and write a sentence that matches the pictures they drew in their own journals.
Overall, I think my lesson went well, however, the students tended to talk when they were not supposed to during my lesson. I think that I would have had more control over the class if I would have stopped the lesson completely each time they talked and waited for them to acknowledge that they should not be talking at that time. This is something that I will definitely focus on the next time that I teach. I think that Lemov was correct when he wrote about the 100 percent technique. It is important that the teacher makes sure that she has the attention of all the students instead of just the ones who always pay attention. In my next lesson, I will focus on maintaining the attention and obedience of 100 percent of the class by continuing to monitor what is going on in the classroom while I teach, and addressing behavioral issues appropriately when needed.
I continue to enjoy, and I look forward to my next experience in Field III!
I definitely have the same challenge when I teach! Yesterday I tried really hard to stop periodically and get "100% attention", but it is still tough. One thing my cooperating teacher does during her writing lessons that I admire is she gives the students two-three minutes of "talk time" after she models a sentence. She sets the timer and has them turn to a partner and discuss what they are planning on writing about. Not only does this give them a chance to talk to one another but also keeps them from all writing the same sentence as she does :). The students seem to know "talk time" is approaching and I think this helps with the unnecessary chatter.
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