Timing is Everything

What a week. I feel like most of my time these days is spent lesson planning, as I have to be "on," for my class everyday. Lesson planning has proved to be incredibly challenging. It's one thing to come up with something to do during a given class period. It's an entirely different thing to create a lesson that will be effective for a specific group of students. Of course, we've learned different ways to tap into the interests of all types of students in Penn classes (these different ways include capitalizing on different types of intelligences, differentiating instruction, and accommodating learners with special needs). I have to tell you, however, that at this point in the game, it's pretty difficult to blend our theoretical knowledge with the practical experience in the classroom. But it's all about trial and error, right? My classroom mentor is always encouraging me to try new and different things with my class. She is incredibly supportive and helps me navigate my lessons during the planning period and provides great feedback after I deliver the lesson.

This week I had to cover the Bubonic Plague. I was super excited because I was sure this topic would create a lot of discussion and interest. What's more interesting than disease and death, right? I crafted a lesson that I thought would incorporate a hands on activity as well as significant discussion time. Funny thing was, the students had no desire to discuss the Plague. I'd ask, what I thought was, a very thought-provoking question and was met with blank stares. At the end of the lesson I planned I still had ten minutes to go until the end of class! Thankfully I'd planned for an "exit slip," where students had to write a thoughtful response to a question before they could "exit," the classroom. Without this filler activity, I would have been scrambling for a time-filler.

Experiences like this are helping me figure out what works and what doesn't with my particular class, what floats and what sinks. While my Plague lesson was a bit of a sinker, it definitely taught me a lot about how not to try to inspire discussion. Sometimes learning what doesn't work is as valuable as learning what does...