As stated by Robert John Meehan, well prepared and engaging teacher is a catalyst and spark that creates the desire to learn in our students. To be a well prepared and engaging teacher, we must appreciate and engage in through lesson planning to create a roadmap for students and ourselves. For this reason, our lecturer veered away from teaching writing, to engaging us in formulating lesson plans for writing instruction. Considering the fact that every genre of writing requires variations in the planning process, we started by focusing on one planning for descriptive writing.
Similarly to the writing lessons, the lecturer began the lesson planning instruction by involving us in planning a lesson, collectively. The first course of action during this phase was to identify our topic and expectations for students. This allowed us to start visualizing the destination that we want to take our students to, thus contemplating the objectives and activities that they need to achieve to arrive at that point. Despite the fact that we have been consistently writing lesson plans for instruction in various subject areas, planning for this descriptive lesson was slightly different from the what are accustomed to. While some persons felt that we were steering away from the topic by seemingly focusing on adjectives during the lesson, others believed that the transitioning from cognitive to psychomotor objectives was a bit slow.
As we continued with the planning of this descriptive lesson, the lecturer gradually released responsibility to us by allowing different groups to formulate appropriate introductions for the lesson, based on the intentions and objectives which were initially identified. After sharing ideas and deciding on a few suitable introductions, the groups came together as a class to share their work, which was constructively criticized by other individuals.
This entire activity proved to be quite interesting and meaningful to us because it cleared a misconception for us and provided insight on how to plan writing instruction through the writing process, albeit for one genre of writing. Furthermore, it also gave us the opportunity to gather various objectives, activities and introductions which can be used to teach this one genre of writing, thus facilitating differentiation in the writing classroom.
Moving foward, we suggest that the lecturer continues to involve us in the lesson planning process in the different genres of writing. Not only will this result in us becoming better lesson planners, but it will also equip us with a multitude of ideas to build a bank of interesting activites to utilize on teaching practice and throughout our teaching careers in the writing classroom.
In the link below, you can find information pertaining to descriptive writing. This includes the purpose, reasons for teaching it, how to teach it and two videos which identify activities to use when teaching this genre of writing. We encourage you to take some time to peruse through the contents of the link to hopefully learn something new.
Enjoy!
I too agree planning for descriptive writing was different from that of other subject areas .This lesson showed how prestige it as teachers when planning for descriptive writing. This class activity was very engaging listening to the various activities from colleges, as these activities will be integrated in my lesson plan when planning for descriptive writing.To add, This activity has enlightening my understanding of planning for descriptive writing.
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing the link it is very captivating. I enjoyed watching the video on how the students used their five senses, using a graphic organizer brainstorming for ideas for writing a report. this too can be done in our classrooms.
Nasha John
I like the fact that you started with a relevant quote. It did grasp my attention and so I read further into your post. One point which I would like to comment on specifically is your recommendation to the course instructor. I have never thought of the course instructor modeling the process of each text genre. It was well done by her for the narrative text. Perhaps, we can have a piece for each genre as a class if this were to continue. Brilliant idea! The only drawback is that it can be time consuming but so is the writing process. Great writers take time especially if you are modeling this to your students. I therefore agree with your recommendation and I am in support of it.
ReplyDeleteWritten by: Ryan Bicar.
"A well prepared and engaging teacher is a catalyst and spark that creates the desire to learn in our students." This quote stimulated my interest in this blog post because of the many reasons why we plan. Primarily and most importantly, we plan to boost our confidence level. This helps us to be aware of what our intentions are when teaching the students. Secondly, planning helps with organisation in order for there to be a sense of control and direction while teaching. Moreover, if the plan is well organised, the teacher will be able to guide the students effectively as the teacher will be well acquainted with the subject matter and will also be able to cater to the students' questions without any stress. We may plan for descriptive writing differently than the other topics but we all plan for the same reasons.
ReplyDeleteIn addition, the course lecturer did a great job in modelling this. This is precisely what we should do with our students in January or on our return to the classroom even though it may take up plenty of time. Additionally, your video was enjoyable and I wish to see more posts like this in the future. Well done and well said!
Written by: Michaela Canchion
Oh yes , it is always a joy to observe our course lecturer in modeling. This really helps make the lessons come alive and gives us deep insight as to what teaching the various aspects of writing should be like. This strategy has also enabled us to clarify some of the misconceptions and doubts that we have had as many of us can attest that some of our past teachers of writing did not utilize the most effective teaching strategies. It is my hope that we can live vicariously through her, effecting changes and shaping writers as efficacious teachers.
ReplyDeleteI share the same sentiment that the lecture should engage us in various lesson plans for different genres of writing. This will prepare us for the up coming teaching practice which requires us to teach Language Arts. Not only will we have an idea of lesson planning but also adapt specific strategies.
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