Lesson Plan Reflection

My lesson involve my students taking a deeper look at character traits. Students were placed into groups and then given an Arthur character to study. I wanted my students to become experts at distinguishing between internal, external, and the thoughts/ideas of their character. Being able to collaborate and work with others was another big portion of my lessons because almost the entire project involved small group work. 

I believe that all of my students learned how to better work with others. This was my biggest fear going into my lesson because my students are so young and this lesson involved lots of small group work. This is a skills that will transfer to so many other areas of their lives and I am excited to have given them the opportunity to expand on this skill now. All of my students definitely struggled with determining a character’s thought process or ideas. This was a brand new concept coming into my lessons and I do not think that the Arthur lessons were a good for introducing this concept. I had seven different character groups which made it very difficult to include every character in every book. This is what made it extremely difficult to understand a character’s thought. For example, the character Binky is not in ever book and is definitely not the main character, making it difficult to grasp his thought process. Next time I teach these lessons, I will teach thought/ideas using another book or prior to these lessons. 

I was very surprised with how my students performed. It was so exciting to see students at all levels getting into this assignment and working so well with others. Looking back at the students work, I can see just how much prior knowledge and information they gathered from the Arthur website they used in their assignments. I never taught nor did I emphasize students to draw on the information from books, websites, prior knowledge, etc. I wanted this to be a natural act. My students did a great job and definitely drew on their resources.

My students need much more support than I ever expected when choosing different character traits. During discussions, students did a great job and they were able to pick tier two words. However while they were in their groups, students began choosing certain hobbies or items that their character liked. It was very difficult to change a 2nd graders thinking so that they could use what their character liked to do and change it into a trait. My objectives never touched upon students thinking so literally. Next time, I want my students to involve themselves in deeper leveled thinking.

I do not think that I would change anything for students who need additional support. In my classroom, I have ELL learners and also some students that are well below grade level in literacy. I had numerous conferences with groups to make sure they were on the right thinking track which helped me to clarify any misconceptions that the students had. Conferencing so often was a great way to re-teach certain material that was misunderstood.

If I was to re-teach this lesson again, I would make sure that my students had a strong understanding as to how to determine a character’s thought process and/or feelings. My students struggled with this aspect of character traits and I do not believe that these lessons are good for introducing this concept. Making this slight change would improve students’ learning drastically.