Blackwell Blog #1

The goals that I approach each new lesson with are various, but all grow in the direction of the objectives I’ve established for that particular class period. These objectives themselves take some consideration, as they must be both attainable and challenging - as well as interesting and relevant - for the grade level that is being taught. For our summer school students at Holly Springs, we’ve decided to focus primarily on the English II objectives (as we have a mixture of II-IV). This ensures that those still in that critical year of state testing will receive all of the instruction they need to succeed in that venue. In addition, I’ve found that many of the basic benchmarks provided for English II by the state of Mississippi are quite analogous to those you would find in English III & IV. We will bring a little bit of the other into the classroom, when we do lessons on American Literary Periods (III) and an overview of British Literature (IV). The idea with this is to target those in III and IV specifically, while introducing concepts to the English II students that they will see sooner or later, anyway.

Practically, one or two objectives/goals are the rule. These are clear, concise, and limited to the ‘mastery’ of one specific benchmark or an isolated (if that’s even possible) element of the standard high school English course. My lesson plans tend to follow similar patterns; an inductive set that engages the students with the material to be covered later in the period in a creative or abstract way. A particalur inductive set that I have already used was to pose a question on what the class feels the definition of ‘romantic’ is. They shared their responses, and then we went into a discussion on the Romantic Period of American Literature. I told them to keep in the back of their mind what they felt ‘romantic’ meant, and that we would come back to it at the end of the period. They, thus, came up with a new definition on their own based on the characteristics of the period. In addition, we discussed logic and creativity by using Starbursts – such that each student was asked to provide a logical use and some creative uses for it, then connect these to what we have learned about the Romantic Period and draw their own conclusions.

This leads into the procedures, which can be broken up into; presentation/identification, discussion/engagement, and finally practice/use. One of the more difficult aspects of lesson planning is meeting these goals for the varied needs of your students. In a classroom of 20+, which we are fortunate enough to have, there are 20+ different levels of prior knowledge – much of which we are just now beginning to see. Thus, I always try to present my material both in a very clear, logical and common sense fashion while inserting ‘interesting’ tangents or more critical analysis for the students that may be a bit more advanced in the classroom. To go along with this, students should always be doing something. Note taking is good, but graphic organizers are better. Worksheets are ok, but activities really get them involved with the material. And always, or almost always, I incorporate some sort of reading comprehension into the period if I can (and if I can’t, then for homework). Reading is essential for all of our students, and most of them I’ve found need attention paid to this more than anything else.

Thus, by keeping appropriate goals, we should see our students develop throughout the course of the next month. The pre and post tests should evaluate this. In addition, we’ve decided to spend some time every day with a couple of students (so that they are all met with at least once per week) in individual instruction /tutoring. We have writing samples that we will be looking at closely with them and isolating their specific problems or academic issues. I’ve seen students in the past really take to this method and their progress sky-rocket.