EDCI 602: Blog #2: Teacher Performance

I feel that I have done some of my best teaching during these past few weeks. I think my students were must successful during one of my lessons for SVA. I was also being observed that day so I’m glad it was one of my best days. I used a paragraph with indefinite pronouns (which we had not yet covered) as a means to introduce the topic. I gave each student a paragraph to work on and instructed the class to work individually on finding the subject in each sentence, some of the subjects were indefinite pronouns; by noting the plurality of the verb used in each sentence, students were able to deduce which pronouns were singular and which were plural. One reason I thought it worked so well is because it was introduced to them inductively. They figured it out themselves as opposed to me just stating something and telling the students to take it as truth. A second reason for its success was the change in technology: I used a projector for my lesson, and it was the first time that a projector had been used in class. It gave the students a new way to relate to the information. This added with the inductive aspect really guided comprehension.
My students were not very successful in understanding the parts of a bar graph. One reason for their lack of success was due to the short amount of time I was able to spend discussing bar graphs. I spent a lot more time explaining a different type of visual aid that by the time I came to bar graphs, I was able to quickly describe them and handout out a worksheet for them to work on for homework. There was little to no real instruction. A second reason for this failure lies in the time span of the summer school and how we lead teachers divided that time. We were very good at deciding which topics were more important to teach and later reinforce. We scheduled what was going to be taught by which teacher for every single class period during the June session of the school. Doing this, however, made it very hard to find extra time for an extra lesson on visual aids. Since I had already taught classes on pie charts and tables, I felt I had sufficiently covered the topic of visual aids and decided to live with the fact that we never covered bar graphs.
I think that the way in which I organized my procedures greatly helped student comprehension. I utilized different kinds of text and worksheets, used varied technology, and at times changed the location of class for an entire period. I think that by changing up the things I did in the classroom, I effectively used differentiated instruction. By reaching a greater number of students through these means, I was able to increase overall comprehension of the topics I taught. I think I could have used more technology in my lessons than what I did this past month. Just from the reaction I received when I used a projector and transparencies, I’m certain that by using more technology in my lessons, I could have improved my students’ performance during those class periods.