Week 3

This week, I taught two lessons. The first was about annotation, and it was directed towards all odd day classes (1st, 5th, and 7th periods). Students were shown, via power point presentation, a marked-up (annotated) version of the essay that they had previously read. 1st period appeared to grasp the content of this lesson, as they seemed knowledgeable on the annotation process. After teaching the annotated portion of this lesson, the students read another essay (read orally-decided by class vote) and annotating it into their notes as they proceeded. As I walked around the room, I assessed the students’ annotation skills, alongside the content that I taught in my lesson, to determine if they had learned and applied anything that I had taught them; to my surprise they were actually utilizing tips that I had taught in the lesson.

5th and 7th periods instruction for this lesson was modified. I showed (via power point) these students the handout (essay) that I had jotted down notes on, as well as these notes handwritten on note paper; this was meant to demonstrate how to annotate notes, transcribe them, and develop these ideas further. We did not get through the entire annotation lesson, though I believe that the students all pulled at least one thing or another from it that will help them in the future.

On Friday, I did a pre-writing lesson with the 5th and 7th period classes. For this lesson, I wanted to demonstrate some pre-writing exercises/activities (ABC Brainstorm Chart, List, Cluster) that would incite students to generate ideas and utilize pre-writing skills that would not only help them in English class, but their other classes as well. I created a Power Point presentation that demonstrated each activity and included examples of each, so that students would fully comprehend each activity before working with it. 5th period chose Morgantown High School as their topic for these activities. First, they worked individually to complete the ABC Brainstorm Chart, then collectively as groups as they competed against other groups in order to come up with the most original answers (groups would not get points if another group had the same answer). I did this same procedure with 7th period, but they voted that their topic be music, and both classes got very involved in the lesson; this type of hands-on activity seems to work well for both of these classes, and as long as both classes stay focused and on task, they produce very proficient work.