Mini-Unit On Pigs

Reflections & Evaluation

Evaluation of the Whole Unit:

I was genuinely pleased with the success of my mini-unit. I worked really hard to pull it all together, and I am so glad that I did. I feel that I am honestly prepared to do the BIG thematic unit for my next placement. I am also more prepared for doing this in the future. In the process of all of my sleepless nights I realized that you only get out of something what you put into it. I learned so much by designing this unit, not only about pigs but about myself and teaching.
I learned that in the primary grades, directions have to be explicitly clear, they have to be repeated several times before they sink in, and the models that you use have to be exactly what you want kids to do. I learned that pigs are used in several products that I use every day such as plastics, make-up, chewing gum, glue, chalk, jello, and crayons. I also learned that there are over 800 million pigs in the world, most of which live in China. I learned that pigs go to market and weigh 240 pounds when they are only six months old. I learned that if I want to gain respect from my students, I have to follow through with the consequences I set. Finally, I learned that there is no greater joy than seeing a child excited about something that you taught them.
Unfortunately, I was not able to cover everything that I had planned in my overview for this mini-unit. For example, I mentioned comparing guinea pigs and pigs and noting differences and similarities between the two. Due to time constraints, this activity will actually be used by my co-op to introduce a book that several of the children will begin reading in their reading groups next week titled, "Olga da Polga."

Mini-Unit Lesson "Pig"tionaries

In response to this lesson in particular, I felt that it was a great success. The students seemed to be engaged and interested in their work and enjoyed making their own personal dictionaries. My biggest concern continues to be classroom management, especially in a whole-class setting. Several times within the lesson, I felt like the children were controlling me, and that feeling tends to make me a little nervous as a beginning teacher. However, as I get more practice and advice on how to improve my management skills in the classroom, I feel more confident and sure of myself and my actions in the classroom. After talking to my co-op and my supervisor about management, I was able to compile a list of techniques to try or use in the classroom.
One suggestion, for example, is to make my warnings and consequences clear at the beginning of the lesson and follow-through with these consequences when children choose to ignore their warnings or display strict defiance when I ask them to do something. Another suggestion was to give the child a direction or command rather than ask them a question in a discipline/management situation. For example, instead of saying, "Joe, can you please move over here next to me?" I would say, "Joe, I need you to come sit next to me because I want you to hear what everyone's saying instead of getting into mischief under the table."
Another management technique that my co-op suggested after this lesson was to try giving a positive reinforcement for good behavior. For example, I would tell the students that periodically throughout the lesson I would consider adding a letter to the board and if I spelled the magic word, for example "pig," by the end of the lesson, they would get 5 extra minutes at recess. The only way to add a letter is if the whole class is participating and paying attention. I particularly liked this suggestion because it gives the teacher an opportunity to focus on the positive rather than the negative behavior in the class-- something I definitely need to work on myself. Another suggestion for management was to become more aware of the silent/quiet behaviors in the classroom. It seems that sometimes when I am teaching, I am more concerned about getting through the lesson rather than focusing on the little side problems/misbehaviors. As a teacher, I need to work on developing eyes in the back of my head and becoming more aware of all of the children in the classroom, even those in my blind spots.
Beyond classroom management, my co-op and I thought of several other ways to improve this lesson on "pig"tionaries. First, I would go back and create a model that is exactly like the one that the students would be asked to make. Believe it or not, students saw my model (where the text was the same but the definitions were hand written rather than cut and paste) and they wanted their models to look exactly like the model. The directions of the lesson were to cut and paste the definitions into the book. The focus of the lesson was more on becoming familiar with the terms and alphabetizing rather than writing. However, I saw no harm in letting them write the definitions if they wanted to. The only problem was that the writing took a very long time and caused the lesson to stretch over several days of class time. So, lesson to be learned...make the model EXACTLY like the product you want from the students.
Another thing I learned from this lesson was that second graders don't adapt well when they are given too many choices. I felt that the students should have some say in the words they put into their dictionaries, but giving them this option caused a lot of confusion and time. As I mentioned earlier, the focus was not on the words they chose, but that they were able to put them in alphabetical order. Next time, I would select a list of words that I wanted the students to use and keep it consistent for every student. The way I designed it, students spent a majority of their time trying to figure out which words to use, rather than alphabetizing or illustrating the meaning of the words.
Another suggestion from my co-op was to be aware of the skill level of the students that I am teaching. Although the students had been working on alphabetical order before I started this unit, they still had not worked on or discussed how to alphabetize words that have the same first three letters. Although we were able to discuss and solve this problem as a class, it would have probably been better to cover these skills before introducing the words to them in this format.
Other than the suggestions I mentioned, I felt that the lesson went very well. The work that the students completed in this part of the unit really gave me a better understanding of the knowledge they were able to remember and reflect on from previous lessons. The students were very proud of their dictionaries. They are currently hanging in the hallway display for everyone in the school to see.
As I mentioned throughout this reflection, my co-op had several suggestions for improving this lesson. She also felt that it went really well and was pleased to see that most of the children were able to alphabetize the words and create a dictionary of their own. The only other suggestion that she made that I haven't already mentioned in my reflection was to possibly read more informational books to the children before introducing this lesson to them. She mentioned possibly reading an informational book at the beginning of this lesson to open a discussion of these vocabulary terms before starting the dictionaries. Overall, she was very pleased with the growth in their vocabulary and the success of their dictionaries.

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