Reflection of Reading Lesson
My main objective for this lesson was for the students to think abstractly about the characters in a story and figure out what their character traits were. Students were asked to find exact parts of a story that represented places where you could tell what a character trait was, for a specific character. I wanted students to learn the importance of a character trait and how it played into the plot of the story. I feel as though my students learned just that. Students showed me that they were able to find character traits in a story for specific characters and when asked to explain why it was important they were all able to do this as well. Students learned how to find a character and that characters traits throughout the story. They also learned how a character's traits could stay the same or change throughout the story. They learned this part of the lesson from the character Brother in the book The Berenstain Bears and the Forgiving Tree.
I feel as though my reading lesson on character traits went very well. My activities ran smoothly and the students seemed to really enjoy them. My favorite part and I think their favorite part as well was making the papers with their own names and traits on it. After my lesson my coordinating teacher told me she really liked that idea and had not thought of it that way before. She told me that some of her students really struggled with understanding character traits and she felt that relating it back to themselves was very insightful and creative. I feel like relating something back to the students gives them something more concrete to relate the topic of learning to. Students also just like to talk about themselves and I think that is why that part of the lesson was so successful. Something else that went well was my transitions from one part of the lesson to another. I was not really sure going into it if I was prepared enough for the unknowns, like transitions. However, as I got started it all fell into place. I would give countdowns to end the activities and gave instructions as I went instead of all at once. The students seemed to be able to handle small amounts of instructions better than if they were large amounts all at once.
Even though I feel my lesson went well overall there are two aspects that I feel could have been improved on. However, these two things are easy fixes and if I fixed those two aspects I would definitely teach this lesson again. The first aspect I would have changed would be my read-aloud. I read most of the story before I went to teach my lesson, however, it was more of just a skim and I missed the part at the very end that had a religious reference. I changed it on the spot but it was not a very good cover-up and I ended up leaving parts of the story out. If I could go back and do it again I would really read the story and go ahead and put sticky notes on the book with the "new words" for the end of the story. This I feel would make the end of the story more understandable for the students instead of my hurried changing of the story's ending. The next aspect of my lesson that could have been improved on was the instruction on how to do the personal character traits activity. After giving the initial instruction the students were still a little confused and kept asking me questions. The way I would fix this part for next time would be two changes. The first would be, for me to give each student a paper with their name already written really big in block letters printed on it. This way the students understood how big to make the letters and would give them a basis to start with. The other part I would change would be to have an exemplar already finished with my name on it. I think this would give them an idea of what their finished product should be like. With that being said, I still want them to be creative so I would make sure to mention to them that their finished products did not have to look just like mine and tell them to get creative. If I did this I think my students would have been less worried about the finished product and more worried about the actual idea of thinking of their own personal character traits.
I can tell my students grasped the concept of my lesson by looking back at their character traits worksheets. They were all very in depth and all showed a specific place in the book that could back the traits up. I could also tell because when I walked around the students were passing the 39 Clues book around to locate exact pages and quotes to back up their information. The students were having great conversations with each other explaining why they chose that character trait or why they did not. As I walked around the room I would ask students to tell me about one of the characters they chose and 99 percent of the students were able to successfully do this.
I feel as though my reading lesson on character traits went very well. My activities ran smoothly and the students seemed to really enjoy them. My favorite part and I think their favorite part as well was making the papers with their own names and traits on it. After my lesson my coordinating teacher told me she really liked that idea and had not thought of it that way before. She told me that some of her students really struggled with understanding character traits and she felt that relating it back to themselves was very insightful and creative. I feel like relating something back to the students gives them something more concrete to relate the topic of learning to. Students also just like to talk about themselves and I think that is why that part of the lesson was so successful. Something else that went well was my transitions from one part of the lesson to another. I was not really sure going into it if I was prepared enough for the unknowns, like transitions. However, as I got started it all fell into place. I would give countdowns to end the activities and gave instructions as I went instead of all at once. The students seemed to be able to handle small amounts of instructions better than if they were large amounts all at once.
Even though I feel my lesson went well overall there are two aspects that I feel could have been improved on. However, these two things are easy fixes and if I fixed those two aspects I would definitely teach this lesson again. The first aspect I would have changed would be my read-aloud. I read most of the story before I went to teach my lesson, however, it was more of just a skim and I missed the part at the very end that had a religious reference. I changed it on the spot but it was not a very good cover-up and I ended up leaving parts of the story out. If I could go back and do it again I would really read the story and go ahead and put sticky notes on the book with the "new words" for the end of the story. This I feel would make the end of the story more understandable for the students instead of my hurried changing of the story's ending. The next aspect of my lesson that could have been improved on was the instruction on how to do the personal character traits activity. After giving the initial instruction the students were still a little confused and kept asking me questions. The way I would fix this part for next time would be two changes. The first would be, for me to give each student a paper with their name already written really big in block letters printed on it. This way the students understood how big to make the letters and would give them a basis to start with. The other part I would change would be to have an exemplar already finished with my name on it. I think this would give them an idea of what their finished product should be like. With that being said, I still want them to be creative so I would make sure to mention to them that their finished products did not have to look just like mine and tell them to get creative. If I did this I think my students would have been less worried about the finished product and more worried about the actual idea of thinking of their own personal character traits.
I can tell my students grasped the concept of my lesson by looking back at their character traits worksheets. They were all very in depth and all showed a specific place in the book that could back the traits up. I could also tell because when I walked around the students were passing the 39 Clues book around to locate exact pages and quotes to back up their information. The students were having great conversations with each other explaining why they chose that character trait or why they did not. As I walked around the room I would ask students to tell me about one of the characters they chose and 99 percent of the students were able to successfully do this.