Okay, so rather than have the next five weeks be riddled with cryptic remarks before I finally get around to explaining my predicaments, let's get this out of the way.
What in the world is the Term III assignment?
Yep, my Term II assignment is barely out of the way (and thoroughly ungraded), and I'm already moving on to Term III. Like the Term II assignment, it's an integrated project across all of my subject classes and field seminar (my other class, Teaching Diverse Learners, continues to do its own thing). Also like the Term II assignment, it's not just a paper, but rather an ongoing series of fieldwork investigations that will eventually get reflected and expounded upon.
Enough jammering, let's get some details!
Focus: Lesson planning (small group instruction)
Across all classes, the theme is the same: developing lesson plans that can be taught to small groups (4-6 each) of students. The small groups make it easier, which is partially the point -- in most of my teaching experiences so far, management has been a primary focus, and while that's essential to practice, it shouldn't be the only thing in my mind as a teacher. Being able to set it aside for this assignment allows me to focus more of my energy on applying theories of teaching and learning.
For all of our lesson plans, we're expected to produce two documents: a traditional lesson plan (objectives, materials, procedure, etc.), as well as a "core decisions" narrative. The latter is where we're really pushed to draw on our learning from the program -- explaining the "What," "How," and "Why" of our lesson in the context of our own understandings, beliefs, and interests.
Components:
What in the world is the Term III assignment?
Yep, my Term II assignment is barely out of the way (and thoroughly ungraded), and I'm already moving on to Term III. Like the Term II assignment, it's an integrated project across all of my subject classes and field seminar (my other class, Teaching Diverse Learners, continues to do its own thing). Also like the Term II assignment, it's not just a paper, but rather an ongoing series of fieldwork investigations that will eventually get reflected and expounded upon.
Enough jammering, let's get some details!
Focus: Lesson planning (small group instruction)
Across all classes, the theme is the same: developing lesson plans that can be taught to small groups (4-6 each) of students. The small groups make it easier, which is partially the point -- in most of my teaching experiences so far, management has been a primary focus, and while that's essential to practice, it shouldn't be the only thing in my mind as a teacher. Being able to set it aside for this assignment allows me to focus more of my energy on applying theories of teaching and learning.
For all of our lesson plans, we're expected to produce two documents: a traditional lesson plan (objectives, materials, procedure, etc.), as well as a "core decisions" narrative. The latter is where we're really pushed to draw on our learning from the program -- explaining the "What," "How," and "Why" of our lesson in the context of our own understandings, beliefs, and interests.
Components:
- Math & Science: Submit a lesson plan for each, teach a lesson, write about it!
- Design and submit a lesson plan, so that your instructor can provide feedback on the plan before you teach it.
- Revise your lesson accordingly.
- Teach it! One 45-60 minute lesson, with roughly 4-6 students. At least one person (your Penn Mentor, your Classroom Mentor, or a fellow student) must observe and give feedback.
- Then, reflect the hell out of it. Lots of thinking, lots of writing.
- Finally, submit...a website! Yep, paper is out, even electronic papers are history, this jawn goes online.* Don't worry if you've never done it before, the technology is pretty simple and there's lots of support (I'm writing this blog while skipping a tech session as we speak! The instructor just awkwardly made eye contact as she left the bathroom! It's fine, it's optional).
- Literacy: Same as the above, but you do it with a partner.
- With a partner (presumably someone in the same school and/or grade as you) you design and submit a lesson plan together.
- One partner teaches first, and the other observes; that partner then makes revisions as needed and teaches on a later date.
- Social Studies: Do they still teach that?
- So a sad truth is that lots of our schools don't really do much social studies. Our instructor gave us two options, depending on whether our Classroom Mentor is willing to let us teach a Social Studies lesson (which mine totally is):
- Option A: Do pretty much the same thing as for all the above subjects
- Option B: Write two related lesson plans, without actually implementing them but with some extra depth.
- There's some other pieces to this one as well, such as beginning a resource inventory (i.e. a spreadsheet to keep track of books and materials that you could potentially draw on for social studies lessons in the future).
- Seminar: Wrapping it all together (again).
- Like with the Term II assignment, Seminar tries to be the the cookie dough that holds together all the delicious morsels from the other classes.
- In this case, you tie everything together with an overarching question and analysis of your lessons through that framework.
There, did I make that all simpler for you?
*Note, if you are unfamiliar with the word "jawn," that's just another reason you should consider moving to Philly.
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