English 493 had me complete many different tasks. Book talks
introduced me to many texts I have never heard of before, and some of the texts
that I did know I never really thought about trying to implement them in a
class. So, book talks were useful; they also had me look at a book that I
probably wouldn’t have considered to use in a class, but now I really want to.
I hope I have the chance to use Narnia
in a unit. Doing a mini-lesson let me practice new ideas in the class room and
practice teaching Night which I will
most likely teach if I have an English class. It also provided me with quite a
lot of feed back to work off of, feedback I can apply to other lessons as well.
Seeing mini-lessons provided me with numerous amounts of ideas to use as
inspiration as well, which will be quite helpful in the future. The unit plan
was the largest and most time consuming of the works that I completed for this
class. It taught me how to plan every aspect of a unit thought and that is
essential for any teacher. It provided me better skills to write a lesson plan
and now I know what to change next time I make a unit.
One of
the theories/concepts that stuck out to me the most that I learned in this
class was using pop-culture in the classroom. By using pop-culture, students
become much more engaged in the activity and lesson that they are a part of.
They feel a connection and worth to the material. Paired with this concept is
having reading material that is relevant to the times. Kelly Gallagher wrote
about having students read articles that are happening in the news as of recent
students will be well informed of the world around them. It not only educates
students of the world, but some of the articles may relate to something
students have a strong passion for. Also from Gallagher is 50/50 reading. The
idea that while there are academic books to read, students should be balancing
that with books they themselves enjoy. Reading is not meant to be a chore, so
teachers should avoid making it out to be one, even if they do not mean to do
so. My favorite lesson idea was having students choose a song and analyze it
with a poetic scope. Everybody has a favorite song or music they are passionate
about, and this gives students a chance to further explore that music and apply
it to a class room setting.
By
participating in this course it made me feel and think of myself as more of a
teacher. I have gained so much knowledge from this course and it has added to
my arsenal of teaching tools. Teachers use pedagogy to teach, it’s how they
design lessons, this course introduced several new ones to me and so now I see
myself as a different kind of teacher as before, one with a better sense of
direction that I want to take when teaching my own class room. By showing up to
class I learned much from my fellow classmates as well. We were able to bounce
off ideas and get feedback from each other as well as inspiration.
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