The lessons that I have planned and implemented have gone in the direction that I wanted them to. After being able to implement my own lessons, I have found a few areas that I would like to work on. The first lesson that I taught was the introduction piece to the hero cycle or home-away-home structure. I used "Where the Wild Things Are" for this introduction. As a class we first went over the hero cycle chart which included the main character, the main character going into the wild, facing some type of challenge, solving that challenge, and then coming home changed. I read through the book pretty quickly at first because most of the students have read this book. I told them to pay close attention to who the main character was and what his events in the story were so that we could fill out the chart after doing an activity. I talked with four students on the Friday before the lesson about performing a short skit as I read the story for a second time. All four of these students were excited and enthusiastic about doing this. After quickly reading the book to the class, I asked these students to come help me perform the events to the class. As I read the book again and the four students acted it out, every other student was attentive. I think that the use of the other students in this book worked really well, especially because this is a book that most of them know. Because this was new, something that the students have never done in this class, it brought in the whole class' attention which allowed for a great following discussion. This is something that I would definitely incorporate again if there was the opportunity. For the next few days I had the students asking me if we were going to act it out and if they could be a part of it. Another component of my lesson that was new to my students is the fact that I used pictures to go with each heading of our chart. This drew in a lot of the students' attention. Because of this I made pictures for the next day as well. I like the idea of incorporating text and illustration when possible because some students learn better when they see pictures.
My second lesson went well, except for some classroom behaviors. I opened my second lesson by having the students look at the previous day's chart. We talked about how we knew that Max was the main character. I'm glad that I asked this question because many of the students applied the idea that we saw him in almost all of the pages to the book we read this day ("Two Bad Ants"). Chris Van Allsburg shows instead of tells in his writing. Because of this I wanted to make sure that my students understood that when he said the ants were climbing a mountain he really meant they were really climbing the wall as well as all of the other places that the ants go. Because of this we stopped often to make sure that everyone understood because there are many students who would take what I read literally. My MT allows the students to have a stuffed animal on their lap during reading. However, they are always playing with them, playing with each other's, fighting with them, etc. This happened during my lesson this day. It was a complete distraction to some students including me. There were several times where I had to stop and tell students to put away the stuffed animal or to just hold it on their lap. I decided that the next day I was going to just take the stuffed animals away because not only is it a distraction to some students, but also to me. I realized this day that I need to figure out when I can tolerate certain behavior, and when I need to put an end to it. I decided that for now, stuffed animals were just going to be eliminated so I could focus on teaching the students since they don't even get used properly when my MT is teaching.
My third day of GLT went very well. I passed out a paper to the students. I explained that they were going to have two minutes to write down as many patterns as they possibly could about the two charts or the two books that we had read the day before. They were also to say what structure these two authors used while writing their stories. I gave the students two minutes. This was enough for some, but for others this was not enough to start actually writing. If I were to do this over again, I would give the students one minute to think and then give them two minutes to write about what they were thinking. We quickly went over the two charts that we had completed. I told the students that they all had a very important job--they were all going to make their own chart about the book we were about to read. The students were quite attentive at this point. I stopped at a few vocabulary words in this book just as I had the two days before. I found it easier to stop during the book so that they had the word in context at that moment. I made sure to use different voices for each of the snakes in order to keep the students' attention. After reading the book, I asked the students who the main character was. They could all agree on Verdi. I gave the students their own chart laid out in the way that our past two were laid out. The students were told to put the headings on the left side, and fill in what goes with each heading on the right side. Most all of the students were able to do this. I left the two charts up in the back of the room. There were a few students who used this as a guideline which was great. Some of them had trouble with identifying how the main character solved the problem that they had stated. They would write a challenge and then write how they solved a different challenge. I decided that i would go over this at the start of the next lesson.
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