Reflection from first day of a week of lessons for 8th Grade

Content Focus: Louis Sacher’s Holes
Topic Focus: Understanding Web Learning Interfaces and Sourcing from the Text
Standard Focus: 7.1.E.4.b Identify and explain information directly stated in the text.
  7.1.E.4.c Draw inferences and/or conclusions and make generalizations.

Essential Question: How can I interact with our digital classroom? How can I use information from a text to justify and support my generalizations and opinions?

Source for Lesson: Sacher, Louis. Holes.  Random House Inc., New York: 1998.

Objective -  Students will gain a familiarity with the technology that will be used in the classroom. Students will be able to use information directly stated in the text to form opinions, make generalizations, and draw conclusions based on the text.

REFLECTION:

The lesson today did not reach the completion level that I expected.There were several issues involving the computer logins and Google thinking that we were spamming them due to the high volume of accounts that were being made all at the same time. Additionally, the lesson was rather ambitious due to the fact that I am still learning how much to plan per day and am underestimating the amount of time that it takes to complete different tasks as a whole class. However, I think that I learned several things about the way these kind of things will and can confuse students. I think that in many cases, it was difficult for the students to translate the information presented on the projector at the front of the room to their own screen. It was also difficult for students to jump between the lionslanguageartsppcs blog homepage where the instructions were written out and other windows. It is important to incorporate the idea of opening two windows side by side to the students.  

Three aspects that went well:

• The students were excited when they came in and many wanted to check that we were still using the computers and expressed excitement to know that we were.
• The students, confused or not, were engaged.
• I did not feel upset that things went not as well as I had hoped. Mrs. Shaw has really shown me and encouraged me that even if something seems like it will never work, through dedication and repetition of process things will succeed. I think that is an invaluable lesson that I am very fortunate to have been exposed to so early in my internship.

Three aspects to change:

• Tomorrow, I think that while the students are working independently in their groups, it would be beneficial to call them up one or two at a time to one of the teachers’ computers and walk them through the process of creating an account if they were unable to do it for homework. I believe that vocal mass confusion exacerbated the confusion of the group as a whole.
• It might have been a better idea to make the Google Accounts for the students ahead of time and then allowed them to change their password, this might have prevented the Google override that made it so we could no longer make more accounts at the time of our class.
• Because we have so many adults that come to work with this class (between 4and 6 on any given day), next time we are doing an account login of some kind or introduce a new procedure, I think that moving into group tables and having a worksheet outlined for the adult to walk a small group of three to four students through the process would be much more beneficial than having all attention focused on the board and increasing the confusion.