Today we had five wonderful Reading Lesson Presentations. Many thanks to the presenters. For today's blog, please give feedback on the lessons to each group (see prompts below). A reminder for presenters, please e-mail me your Reflection by next Monday, July 20. Also, the blogs/reading logs are due on July 20 -- you should have ten entries. Please e-mail the blogs in one attachment. The end is coming fast -- hang in there!
Tonight was my group’s presentation. I was nervous, no matte how old I get I still get nervous public speaking and always tend to forget something. The first group that went was awesome. They did two games about word families. It was very useful and interactive. Something I could see students of any age loving. I especially liked the music element to the lesson. All too often music gets lost in curriculum. Music is fun and kids remember the songs forever. The fact that kids remember must mean they learned something and enjoyed it. I learned as well form this lesson. I have not had a lot of experiences with younger grades but think it would be alt of fun!
ReplyDeleteMy group did a presentation on reading comprehension. Reading comprehension is something that I really value because in the middle years so many students have trouble reading it, but it often goes nun diagnosed. I have loved this class because we always deal with and get useful information to help us as teachers go out into the work force and try and make a difference. Anyways our presentation was abut using Penguins as our topic to help focus student son pulling our information from the text. The idea was that after many lessons of teaching students how to use reading comprehension strategies like inferencing, predicting, questioning and connecting they have developed skills to write a short paper to answer relevant questions about a penguin.
The presentation went well; we used a combination of group work, art, oral and teacher modeling to present the lesson. In theory this lesson would take may weeks to lead us up to the point that we were teaching tonight.
The other groups that went tonight all had something to offer. Not all of the groups presented to the same age category and I thought that was great because as TOC’s we will be all over the place and it is important to get a feel for different age groups. I like the third groups Shakespeare lesson. They seemed passionate about the topics and made it fun and interesting for the students. I liked how Darcy made of point of saying that lessons need to be about creating success for the students. It is a very important thing to remember.
This was a great class with many inspiring lessons. I plan to use many of these lessons in my own classroom someday! Most, if not all, of them could be adapted in some way to be age appropriate for most grades. I like having the chance to pretend we are elementary students again. The activities presented were all so interactive and fun. These presentation classes have been so useful for gaining ideas and inspiration for our futures in teaching.
ReplyDeleteMy group also did their presentation today. I find that I am always really nervous before presentations but they never go as badly as I expect! I don’t know why I have such a fear of presenting. I am fine in front of children but my peers are a different story.
Thank you everyone for such a fun class!
Thanks Sue and classmates from Ashok K.
ReplyDeleteAll the presentations have been great. The quality of effort has shown. Only small thing I would say could be improved upon is the length of some lessons going longer than needed to. But this is only a small thing and nothing else I can think of I would change. Perhaps spreading the lessons out into an extra week may improve the feeling of tiredness and pressure. However, the lessons were all so good and will come in handy later for all of us…
Throughout this semester I think I have blogged more than I needed and enjoyed it a lot. I will continue to blog and respond, however, I would like to submit what I have done upto now. Additional posts will follow online and I feel more than confident with what I have been able to add to this pot of learning.
Thank you for facilitating this way of learning and adding our own ideas and thoughts Sue.
p.s. Sue, I will submit my reflection to you later in the week because I need to read what other groups have written concerning my presentation and reflect upon it. My group will try to answer questions posed in our section online as well.
Ashok K.
God Bless :)
I really appreciate all the amazing work everyone has done. This is one of the most useful classes I’ve had during my PDP program. The classes are always very informative and very practical. There are so many ideas; I can bring with me to my future classrooms. Thanks everyone for filling up my teacher’s tool box.
ReplyDeleteMable
Thanks Sue for such a great class! I feel like I'm leaving with a large amount of resources from which I can pull for when I am TOC-ing in the Fall, and also for when I have my own classroom. I definitely learned a lot in this class! Thank you!
ReplyDeletePresentations are always interesting and informative, (truthfully they can even be boring but this is not the case this time!). It has been very enjoyable to experience with so many different insights. We all had the same parameters for the presentation and it is so refreshing to see where we all went. I feel this has been such a useful class! Thank you Susan, for giving us the opportunity to engage with so much rich material. Thank you everyone else for having the courage to engage with the material in such creative and wonderful ways! I feel a little more prepared to teach reading. I recognize so much that we have learned will really come to a full understanding when I put them into practice.
ReplyDeleteThank you Sue for a wonderful class! It was full of many interesting lectures and valuable content-area knowledge. I first came to this class after it had been recommended from one of the ladies at the Burnaby School Board; I have been extremely glad to find out that it has been incredibly helpful in questions during the interview process and on tests that I have taken. It has given me a base of knowledge about reading and the steps and stages in the reading process that I did not know before. Each lesson has been very practical and provided me with lesson ideas and plans that I am excited to use in the future. You challenged us to think on our feet and come up with ideas collaboratively. I believe that this process is one that will help us in the teaching community because collaboration is a key aspect in the life of the Elementary and the Secondary Schools.
ReplyDeleteLast class was great! There were some excellent presentations. Thanks to everyone for the creative and explicit lessons, the presentations provided a lot of useful techniques and ideas to build my toolkit. I have found that what has been most useful in this class over the semester is having the opportunity during class time to work with others in creating lessons or activities involving reading. Thinking of ideas and talking about it with others has been so beneficial because of the relevancy it has for my practicum and future teaching endeavors. Sharing of ideas has been what has kept me engaged in the course and has sparked my interest in different areas of reading that I hadn’t put much though into before.
ReplyDeleteThis was my first experience blogging. I felt that at times, that it was way too time consuming! There were volumes of information I had to read to stay connected to the thread of the blog (look at that I am even learning some of the language!) On the other hand, the instant feedback after the presentations, with different perspectives had its’ value. Research has shown that one of the biggest motivators for children to read is instant feedback because it builds self-efficacy. So the question is: was my self-efficacy built up by the instant feedback? Perhaps it was.
ReplyDeleteAs I write this, my 18 year old daughter sits next to me doing networking, some homework (how much I am not sure), and watching T.V. on her Mac. I have never engaged at this level with my computer EVER! I have a love hate relationship with it; therefore, my feelings towards a blog are understandable. Is this a generation gap?? We did not have computers when I went to school a century or two ago. There was no instant anything. We did not even have microwave ovens! (Just found out my daughter has never blogged...how interesting! I beat her to it!)
Blogg 10: overall post
ReplyDeleteThanks to everyone for all of your idea and strategy shares. The think I liked the most from this class was that we were allowed to guide our own learning in a sense; we were given a framework and then an opportunity to explore in detail what was most relevant as individuals. I will be contacting some of you to ask for copies of your papers because I share your interest in the topic.
Enjoy your summer, and for those of you who are approaching 405 ENJOY!!!
Tania
I would just like to say that this has been the most practical and useful class I have taken this term; I feel like I am walking away with so many new resources and activities that will be so useful for 405 and TOCing! Every class got us involved somehow (and night classes can be a challenge), and brought more and more ideas, activities and practical knowledge to the table. The presentations (this week and last) were so engaging and full of so many great ideas that I will use. Thank you everybody for putting in so much effort to make them valuable for us!
ReplyDeleteI think the one of the most practical parts of this course was its multilevel perspective. Lessons were always able to be adjusted for “gifted” or “struggling” learners, or applicable across different grades. I also found great value in integrating “non traditional” texts into reading lessons (Highlights, Kids magazines) to increase reading interest. The strongest point, however, was having the opportunity to work collaboratively (and with people who had already completed their 405) to come up with reading lessons on the spot. Even in my limited experience, I understand teaching requires being able to think of your feet; thank you for the practice, and the informational resources!
Enjoy the rest of your summer everyone!
After Class 11 (July 20)
ReplyDeleteYesterday’s class made me think a lot. The true and false sheet was interestingly scary. Scary because there is so much we as teachers need to think about and understand. I really like our class text book and the chapters Sue covered have really built more confidence in me as a growing professional.
Peace in the Middle East and Drive Safe :)
Ashok K.