ParaLessons1to5



The feedback that I received on my summative assessment was extraordinarily helpful. What's most concerning is that what I thought I had in mind wasn't actually something I knew how to construct. Although I have created lesson plans in the past, I really struggled coming up with lessons and tying them back to my ideas for my summative assessment.

Relevance: Without going too in-depth and peering into student's lives, I attempted to introduce the lesson by creating awareness of the mental health community. As it can be seen, students were asked to consider what words such as "psycho" meant to them. Students were also given a brief overview of the author's mental health as well as mental health facilities during the time period. The students have a copy of the novel, so I plan on incorporating language a bit more into my lessons. Students should consider how the language used impacts the way the reader visualizes a mentally ill person.

Alignment: Aligning my lessons to my Big Question was the hardest aspect of creating these lessons. As I was composing the lessons, I couldn't help but panic when thinking about how everything connects. My big question was initially "how does a character's mental illness affect a novel..." but I started to think that this was too broad. I think I will have to go back to each lesson and gather a similar goal--which most likely will have to do with language and character development.

Scaffolding: I saw an opportunity in scaffolding when assigning and collecting homework. I also attempted to connect my bell ringer to the reading assigned before the class, or the lesson previous. Since students have journals that they work on every class period, they will be given the opportunity to reflect on these notes and warm-up questions given throughout the unit. Hopefully, scaffolding will be prevalent when reflecting on how the lesson progressed. This is still a challenge for me!

Diversity: Again, I was hesitant to involve students' personal lives when constructing these lessons. Along with relevance, I attempted to given a quick introduction to society at the time of the novel's publishing. For example, by outlining common characteristics of a "ideal young woman" in the 1960s, students are given the opportunity to compare this to today's society. Being that students are of different cultures and backgrounds, they may all have opinions of what a young lady should aspire to become. I will go back to this lesson and attempt to more specific when addressing diversity among students.

Conventions: Since I was uncertain (and not the most confident) when composing these lessons, I strayed a bit from creating assignment sheets and work sheets. However, in one of the lessons, students are handed instructions when working in groups. I am, however, aware that materials are required in order to have appropriate scaffolding. I think I could ultimately work on my conventions even more when referencing back to homework. Since students go over their homework (sometimes) in class, it would be beneficial to have a work sheet already typed up for them...to guide them throughout the unit plan. I tried to use resources outside of a typical black board, so I focused on small groups, journals, powerpoints, and posters.

It pains me to say this, but now that I have completed my five lessons, I see errors I did not think were possible when planning. There are aspects that I must change in order for the unit to make sense as a whole. I also need to rethink my big questions and the goals I want students to achieve. Before I work on my last five lessons, I will need to re-create or re-focus my plans for this unit.