The photo above represents me being stretched outside of my comfort zone. One of the biggest things I learned from this experience was that it is valuable to be taken out of your comfort zone. But, it was not an easy lesson for me to learn.
This was the first time I had ever written a unit plan. As a sophomore, I had taught plenty of individual lessons. The idea of planning an entire unit scared me, though. As I began to plan, the schedule of teaching days was a hot mess. I ended up needing to finish my unit early in order to get all of the teaching in, which added to my anxiety. In addition, my students had learning disabilities in reading, but were all on different levels. It was a challenge to make the book both accessible and enjoyable for all of my students. As I began to plan, I found that the hardest part was getting started. Once I began writing down ideas on sticky notes, my floor was soon covered in sticky note ideas. I found that my biggest planning struggle was over-planning. I thought that an hour was a very long time, but I learned that an hour goes by in the blink of an eye. In almost every lesson, I had to cut out activities. I wrote all the activities down on a sticky note on top of each lesson, and I had to quickly prioritize each day. In the future, I think that I will plan in some "gray areas" into my lessons. These gray areas will be extra time for the important parts of lesson, time for some of the less important activities, or time for the unexpected. I think that doing this will help to alleviate my problem of over-planning.
The actual teaching of my unit was also out of my comfort zone. In the past, I have always worked with younger students. I particularly "click" with kindergarten/first grade. For this unit, however, I was working with 5th grade students. I learned that teaching 5th graders is very different from teaching first graders. When I attempted to use behavioral management strategies that I use with kindergartners, I had students simply refuse to do what I asked. I found that the most transformative classroom management strategy was just walking around. We were all sitting at a small table, and I could see everyone's papers from my seat, so I did not think that circulating was necessary. My professor suggested walking around, and it changed everything. All of the sudden, the students were less chatty, more focused, and they did everything I asked. I also found that giving them an authentic audience really helped motivate them. For all of the writing activities, I had the students share their writing with their peers. Once they realized that peers would be reading their work, they were much more attentive to spelling, grammar, and word choice. I also found that the "illusion of choice" was very helpful. If I told students that they could either draw a picture or write a sentence to describe what was happening, I had a much better success rate than if I specified which one they had to do.
By the end of this unit, I was having so much fun. I learned that the more I relaxed and just focused on what the kids needed, the better everything went. I found that by just listening to them and letting them guide some of the discussions, we went deeper into the book than I had ever imagined. My students do not like to read. By the end of this novel, however, they were literally jumping out of their seats begging to read next. They loved illustrating the events of the book in the form of Instagram profiles. One of their absolute favorite activities was a virtual reality video that was set in the middle of a house during a tornado, just as the characters in our book were. It was really cool when we watched the video for a second time after we finished the book, because the students were able to draw out more connections than I had noticed between the book and the video. One of my favorite activities that we did was a character trait chart. The students had to use emojis and words to describe themselves. Then, the students rotated and had to write one more positive character trait on each of their peers' papers. Not only did this help them practice character traits, but it helped form a classroom environment of love and respect. It helped students to look for the strengths in their peers, and it was so powerful to see. As much as this unit plan brought me anxiety, I would go back in a heartbeat because I loved every second I spent with the kids. They helped me to see the book in ways that I never considered, and they helped me to see that while teaching 5th grade is different, it is equally fun and rewarding.
See the pictures below for a peek into the classroom:
This was the first time I had ever written a unit plan. As a sophomore, I had taught plenty of individual lessons. The idea of planning an entire unit scared me, though. As I began to plan, the schedule of teaching days was a hot mess. I ended up needing to finish my unit early in order to get all of the teaching in, which added to my anxiety. In addition, my students had learning disabilities in reading, but were all on different levels. It was a challenge to make the book both accessible and enjoyable for all of my students. As I began to plan, I found that the hardest part was getting started. Once I began writing down ideas on sticky notes, my floor was soon covered in sticky note ideas. I found that my biggest planning struggle was over-planning. I thought that an hour was a very long time, but I learned that an hour goes by in the blink of an eye. In almost every lesson, I had to cut out activities. I wrote all the activities down on a sticky note on top of each lesson, and I had to quickly prioritize each day. In the future, I think that I will plan in some "gray areas" into my lessons. These gray areas will be extra time for the important parts of lesson, time for some of the less important activities, or time for the unexpected. I think that doing this will help to alleviate my problem of over-planning.
The actual teaching of my unit was also out of my comfort zone. In the past, I have always worked with younger students. I particularly "click" with kindergarten/first grade. For this unit, however, I was working with 5th grade students. I learned that teaching 5th graders is very different from teaching first graders. When I attempted to use behavioral management strategies that I use with kindergartners, I had students simply refuse to do what I asked. I found that the most transformative classroom management strategy was just walking around. We were all sitting at a small table, and I could see everyone's papers from my seat, so I did not think that circulating was necessary. My professor suggested walking around, and it changed everything. All of the sudden, the students were less chatty, more focused, and they did everything I asked. I also found that giving them an authentic audience really helped motivate them. For all of the writing activities, I had the students share their writing with their peers. Once they realized that peers would be reading their work, they were much more attentive to spelling, grammar, and word choice. I also found that the "illusion of choice" was very helpful. If I told students that they could either draw a picture or write a sentence to describe what was happening, I had a much better success rate than if I specified which one they had to do.
By the end of this unit, I was having so much fun. I learned that the more I relaxed and just focused on what the kids needed, the better everything went. I found that by just listening to them and letting them guide some of the discussions, we went deeper into the book than I had ever imagined. My students do not like to read. By the end of this novel, however, they were literally jumping out of their seats begging to read next. They loved illustrating the events of the book in the form of Instagram profiles. One of their absolute favorite activities was a virtual reality video that was set in the middle of a house during a tornado, just as the characters in our book were. It was really cool when we watched the video for a second time after we finished the book, because the students were able to draw out more connections than I had noticed between the book and the video. One of my favorite activities that we did was a character trait chart. The students had to use emojis and words to describe themselves. Then, the students rotated and had to write one more positive character trait on each of their peers' papers. Not only did this help them practice character traits, but it helped form a classroom environment of love and respect. It helped students to look for the strengths in their peers, and it was so powerful to see. As much as this unit plan brought me anxiety, I would go back in a heartbeat because I loved every second I spent with the kids. They helped me to see the book in ways that I never considered, and they helped me to see that while teaching 5th grade is different, it is equally fun and rewarding.
See the pictures below for a peek into the classroom: