Lesson Reflection Blog

Wow! I taught my lesson today and alls I have to say is that time flies when you are having fun. My lesson went by so fast I don’t really remember what happened I’m glad I got it on videotape so that I can go back and watch it…although I don’t know how I feel about watching myself! I have subbed for my students before so that made my first time teaching less nerve racking. But I find it amazing how the presence of the teacher completely changes their behavior. This class is crazy when she in not here but during my lesson today they were angels, which is great but just interesting to think about. At first I thought that my mini lesson went to fast but now that I have gone back and read the students work I know that allowing them a lot of work time paid off because they had some great ideas written down! I taught the first lesson of their poetry unit. So the students put their poetry eyes on today and started to think like poets. In my lesson, students learned how poets take ordinary things like pencil sharpeners and make them extraordinary. Before I read the second poem I had students use their poetry eyes to see the ceiling and then discuss their ideas before we read the poem. I was so impressed with their ideas I thought they were even better than the poem we read. After the students had interacted with the two poems I had written on chart paper and had used their poetry eyes they were sent off to their desks to take ordinary objects that I placed their desk and write extraordinary things. And I mean to tell you there imaginations went to a level I didn’t know they could. I was so amazed at what these students came up with. Here are a few ok A LOT of examples of what I am talking about:

“It look’s like a space ship from stre wars.” (I believe he is talking about a shell.)

“The shell is like a house for some sea creachers and it protecr the sea creacher cause it is so hard like a rock and soft and smooth on the inside that has holes on the outside and they float. The float is like a boat for small animals like anntes, spidres.”

“Spaee ship goes through water.” (Sea Shell)

“It look’s like a little diper.” (Measuring cup)

“It look’s like a tree.” (Leaf)

“It look’s like a fishing hook.” (Paperclip)

“It look’s like a sleing shout.” (Plastic spoon)

“A shell looks like a pyrimid. My shell reminds me of a pyrimid it’s going to full a part because they are old.”

“A leaf tells me it has veins. It helps keep them a-live. When a leaf is on a trunk it looks like it’s a fan but it is not a fan it just gives air to us.”

“I think the leaf is a ranibow sometimes because it has diffenet colers and the stem is a pot of gold and the end of the ranibow it allwes has a pot of gold at the end of the ranibow.”

“The shell is a cotin ball and wene it gets in the water it gets hand and it gets smoth.”

“I think it is a castle because it as lots of walls and has buildings and the kigs home is the biggeds house in mingen (Michigan) and is has a bring (bridge) so you can run a why (away) and nevr come back.” (Measuring cup)

The students definitely used their poetry eyes to see the world in a completely new ways. I can’t say that all students did this but a large proportion of them did this. I had one student that was completely stuck on rhyming words, which I never mentioned during the mini lesson. And I could not get through to him that we were just writing down ideas and not writing poetry. Other students just described the objects in an ordinary way and did not take the extraordinary to heart. But today was their first day working with poetry so I was impressed with their beginning thinking. By the end of this unit Mrs. Berry is going to have some amazing pieces!