Lesson planning

Much to my surprise, lesson planning has been the hardest part of this new endeavour.  My district does not have a clear ELA curriculum so I feel like we are largely guessing at what to do.  My mentor teacher, of course, has years of experience and therefore has a good grasp of what 5th graders are capable of, what they need to learn, and how to build the lessons and their knowledge (scaffolding?).  I, however, have none of that and am trying hard to create relevant, interesting, appropriate lessons for the students.

So far I've done two solo days, and several individual reading and science lessons.  While that doesn't seem like a lot, especially when you consider that real teachers have to plan for every lesson, every day, it still has taken me hours. Hours for each lesson!

I start with a general idea of what we are working on. Then try to choose a concept that will be relevant and related.  Sometimes I feel like it fits in smoothly, but other times I feel like it ends up being a one-off thing.

Both solo days have left me feeling defeated in the lesson planning department.  I've gone into the days with what I thought were strong lessons, but the students quickly prove me wrong.  The first writing lesson I did, on chronological storytelling, ended up being confusing to the class.  I used the mentor text Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day and we discussed both chronological storytelling and catch-phrases.  There was my mistake.  I based my lesson on one I found online, but I should have dropped the catch-phrase part.  My class was just confused.  By the third class I was seriously downplaying the catch-phrase part and focusing my efforts on the chronological aspect only. 

Today's writing lesson, for my second solo day, was on proper comma usage.  Again I based the lesson on something I found online and again it left my class confused.  Actually, this time they were more bored than confused.  I used a presentation to show the six main rules of comma usage, but as much as I tried to make it engaging it really was just boring.  I was worried about that before I even got to class.  It felt boring on one hand, yet it also felt like we moved through the lesson too quickly.  Once we got the end and the students broke up into pairs and punctuated sample sentences I had given them, their interest picked up.

My reading lessons and science lessons have been equally eye-opening.  No devastating failures, fortunately, but each lesson has left me with so much more to think about.  

I think I have to re-evaluate how I go about my lesson planning.  I wish my district had an overall outline though, a road map per se, so I could better place my lessons within the overall context of 5th grade learning.  However, since that is not the case, I will continue to work hard and practice.  It's wonderful that UVEI, my awesome placement school, and my amazing mentor teacher provide so much opportunity for me to practice these skills and learn from the pros!

So much to learn!