Week 9 Focused Observation: Reflection of 3-5 Day Unit Plan

Nicole Tate

Date of field experience: April 1-5, 2024

Yorktown Middle School - ELA 8th Grade - 2nd and 3rd period

On the first day of my unit plan we did context for my short story, a skill lesson on annotation, and began reading the short story. After doing an attention grabber brainstorming exercise, we did guided notes. It did not seem like my students had ever done guided notes before because they were confused at first. Once they understood what we were doing, though, they did super well. I honestly don't think I have ever seen all of them paying attention without distraction at the same time before. When I went in and graded the guided notes they were all filled out except for overall a handful of blanks. After helping grade different types of assignments this whole semester, this is the best "participation" in an assignment I've seen. After reflecting a bit, my host teacher doesn't do a lot of teaching in the way of leading instruction at the front of the classroom. It's more giving them assignments and then worktime, so the participation may have been because of this shift. I came in early every day of my unit to be able to get materials ready and talk to my host teacher. On the first day, I was planning on introducing the other "big" assignment for the unit, which was a character development chart. When I came in that morning she had decided she no longer wanted to use this because it would be too much. I totally get that and after teaching the unit I'm glad that I ended up condensing it into a smaller assignment, but I wish she had told me when I initially sent her materials and she said she had no notes on it.

When I started teaching the annotation part of my unit, I realized that the reason my host teacher asked me to cover annotation was not as a review but simply because they had never done it before. When I introduced the topic actually, it only looked like some of them had even HEARD of it. I'm glad that I chose the lesson I did because even though it was initially intended to be a review of annotation, it breaks it down very barebones. I knew that setting them loose with the text with the goal of "annotate it" would not work, especially with this specific group of students. After doing some looking online, I saw some teachers making a bingo sheet for different types of annotations, but knew if my students were only required to do it once then that's all that they would do. I instead created an annotation "checklist". I came up with 9 different types of annotation that I wanted to use, and I counted the number of pages of text in my short story. I decided that a good goal would be for them to have at least one annotation per page, so I made the bare minimum requirement that amount- or 3 of each of the 9 types (24 total). When I went to grade, my host teacher decided that it would just be worth 24 points, which made grading super easy as I just followed along on the checklist. At first when introducing the assignment and annotation requirements, I heard groans and phrases like "this is too much". As it went along, though, I saw students following along in the text and engaging with it, and phrases like "this is easy". By the time we reached the end, the majority of my students had well over the maximum amount of annotations.

For this being a hard week (first week coming back from my concussion), I would have to say that my unit plan went very well. I timed it out very well, which is a skill that I worry about. I was flexible and adaptable, which my host teacher made a comment I was very strong at. I saw lots of evidence of student growth through the assessments I created. What I most enjoyed was seeing students draw connections to their own life. In their annotations, I saw this through the connections they jotted down. I also saw this on my last day where we did stations and they got to learn about their personal strengths/types of intelligences. Reflecting on my own personal life, I'd have to say the way I feel right now is very overwhelmed. I didn't realize how far behind just one week could put you, but I haven't gone a week of college without being allowed to be on my computer, so I shouldn't be surprised. I have a lot of great support, but the hardest thing I have to do now is put in the work and say no to other obligations that aren't the best decision for my health. I had to make the difficult decision to quit the theatre show I was helping with because of the time I needed to catch up on assignments. It has been nice to time to actually go to the library now outside of classes and work now that I don't have rehearsal, but I am now missing something that makes me very happy.