Lesson Implementation Reflection
Lesson Plan
For my lesson, I introduced and taught my second grade reading students about the eight parts of speech. I kept my lesson basic and relatively simple to avoid frustration and confusion. Originally, I had anticipated spending one thirty-minute session discussing the parts of speech and another thirty-minute session assessing my students’ understanding through our wiki. However, once I began, I realized that it would take longer to provide sufficient examples so they could translate the terminology into understanding. Therefore, I spent two sessions explaining and one assessing.
Implementation
I teach a group of nine students in second grade. They are all proficient readers and understand the basics of composing sentences. Since we have already discussed nouns and verbs, I provided them with those words, but asked for their definitions. They were able to quickly provide accurate definitions and examples. While adverb, adjective, and pronoun were less known, with an initial example, they were able to give sufficient examples that demonstrated understanding.
As I had anticipated, understanding conjunctions, prepositions, and interjections was a little trickier. However, with minimal prompting, they quickly grasped a preposition’s purpose. The same was true for interjections. Conjunctions were the only part of speech where my students tried, but did not quite grasp the concept. To re-teach this part of speech is on my upcoming agenda. Other than this minor setback, I am pleased with how well the lesson flowed and the information my students learned and applied with their writing and identifying of the parts of speech.
Reflection
My students now possess a better understanding of the eight parts of speech. But only through re-teaching and review will these concepts “stick” and be correctly used. I appropriately assumed that because we have discussed some of these terms already, my students would have general knowledge upon which I have expanded.
By writing out the terminology and allowing the students to question and answer, they were able to gain a deeper perspective of the material. It will remain to be seen if the information is retained as we revisit these concepts throughout the school year. Perhaps by not having them immediately write down the terms, they did not store the information, but through the presentation of figuring out the words and asking for examples, they may have retained more than I anticipate.
Learning takes place through questions and answers, not simply lecturing. By allowing the students to orally provide their own examples, I could instantly assess whether they understood the concept or not, and I could correct them if they had misconceptions. I readily witnessed the Information Processing module of the Cognitive Theory of Learning as I introduced new words. This naturally segued into Cognitive and Social Constructivism as they worked aloud to create meaning for these new words and make connections to their prior knowledge base. Additionally, with Piaget’s work in mind, they also assimilated these terms into what they already knew and expanded upon the words.
This knowledge supplemented what we have learned and are currently learning in our reading program. We have discussed nouns, verbs, and pronouns, so it was not entirely new. As we continue with our reading, we will re-examine these terms, thus enhancing writing and learning.
Some of my students are naturally more outspoken than others, but since there are so few of them, it is relatively easy to track who has and had not yet shared, thus ensuring that everyone has an equal opportunity to share.
To make this lesson a success, teachers must know and understand the parts of speech to ensure that their students are not being unintentionally misguided. Also, they need to understand the writing level of their students so that the content has meaning for the learners.
To assess their learning, I asked students to orally give me examples as we learned. On the third day, we went to the computer lab where I asked them to compose and post sentences on their wiki page. They were held accountable by completing the posted tasks on our wiki home page and composing appropriate sentences.
Technology played a significant role in assessing the students’ knowledge by giving them the opportunity to contribute their individual thoughts to their wiki page. A distinct advantage is that not only could I see what they were writing, but also they can access each other’s pages and make comments on their sentences and provide assistance to each other without having to solely rely on me as a source of information. In facilitating learning, students will have this work saved onto their pages. They can then add and expand upon what they have learned at a later date. Additionally, the technology affords them the advantage of being able to monitor their own progress. I also found that my having the students type their responses, it created less frustration by having them erase misunderstandings. They were more willing to delete a sentence and try again rather than erase and rewrite as we have done in our notebooks.
I expected my students to use their wiki page to compose sentences based on the parts of speech. We have just begun using wikis in October, so they are very excited to learn and contribute to the knowledge base we are creating. The only major questions I encountered were how to spell words. It is reassuring to know that they are concerned with correct spellings, especially when I am looking for content and clarity of information. I responded to their spelling questions by assisting and telling them to break the words into chunks. This often helped them figure out the words with little help.
The students made sense of the content within their wiki page by asking questions to me and to each other. I encourage them to ask their neighbors questions for deeper understanding. It is very helpful because by having another student explain to them, it not only helps them understand better, but the explaining student develops the vocabulary necessary for conveying the correct explanation. Also, with the wiki, since they can view and comment on each other’s work, it fosters and enables positive collaboration.
