UNIVERSITY OF PUERTO RICO AT HUMACAO ENGLISH DEPARTMENT Humacao, P.R. _____________________________________________________________________________
Reflection on: Importance of Lesson Planning in your Professional Development
Melanie Quintana Torres EDPE4006-001 Prof. Maritza Reyes
A lesson plan is the teacher’s road map of what students need to learn and how it will be done effectively during class. Before you plan your lesson, you will first need to identify the standards that you will use to guide your class .Standards offer an outline for what a teacher is supposed to guide herself/himself in a classroom. Teachers use the Standards as a guide for creating appropriate learning experiences build instructional strategies that focus on what children should be able to learn and do. Used correctly the Standards help teachers provide responsive and intentional opportunities for learning to all the students. Standards are really important they are a big help for the teacher and it sort of guides you in what the students supposed to do during class. There are five standards in which a teacher is supposed to guide herself/himself; Listening, Speaking, Writing, Reading and Language. Standard #1: Listening. This standard is pretty basic. One should think that everybody masters this, but, in the English class this changes. Listening is key to all effective communication, without the ability to listen effectively messages are easily misunderstood. The same happens in the English class, a class cannot be effective if the student doesn’t understand the English language. If a student has difficulty understanding the language it will be the same with expressing himself. In the Listening Standard we have that the students should: listen, support discussions, and interact with peers during read- alouds (of fictional and informational text); oral presentations; and class, group, and partner discussions on a variety of grade‐appropriate academic, social, college, and career topics. Like I mentioned before if the students
have problems with the language they will not communicate properly. In my practice teaching I learned that more than half of my students didn’t understand the language. Hence, something as simple as listening was a harsh job. I spend more time trying to explain to them the material and instructions than actually teaching. At the beginning is really harsh and frustrating because you have to speak English at all times and they don’t understand you. But, thankfully day by day you start trying different techniques that
helps you deliver the message. This is when I learn how important my classroom management class was because it taught me the different methods I could use. Standard #2 Speaking. In this we have: Contribute to class, group, and partner discussions,
sustaining conversations, Respond orally through closed and open-ended questions, Use a variety of grade‐appropriate and content‐specific social, academic, college, and career ready words, among others. How can a student respond if he didn’t understand what he heard? I do believe that these two standards (Listening and Speaking) go hand-in-hand and they are crucial for a student. But, if he doesn’t understand it’s the teacher’s turn to juggle with the standards and try to accomplish them. I learned that it takes time but it’s possible. Sometimes they are not accomplished at its fullest but step by step it is possible. My students had major language skill problems; they lack the language so much that it was unbelievable. In this case motivation was everything I try to make them comfortable with what little vocabulary they had. A classroom atmosphere can change the attitude of the students, that’s why I try to make my students as comfortable as I could. I wanted them to feel good so they could speak without pressure or the peer pressure. Standard #3 Writing. Justify opinions and positions using valid reasoning and sufficient evidence, Write informational and argumentative texts to examine and convey complex ideas, concepts, and information, Write literary texts using transitional words and other cohesive devices, among others. Oddly enough other than grammar and some translations I didn’t have problems with this. Many of my students used google translator or asked someone to do the work for them. in both cases it was pretty obvious and I talked to them about it. In the exams they ask me a lot how to write things or how things were said. They all wrote in really Basic English. Like I mentioned before they don’t have a lot of skills in the language and vocabulary is not the exception. In the reading Standard #4 they were supposed to Use in-depth critical reading, Determine main ideas or themes, Analyze how and why individuals, events, or ideas develop and interact over the course of a text, among others. Again they did have difficulty with these but it was not as serious as the previous ones. They’re major complain was reading texts that were extensive. My students were very lazy and reading a 5 sentence paragraph was torture for them. but, they got used to reading at the end and I did a very good job with these standards. It was a challenge and they needed to use the dictionary, translators and my help but it was possible.
The last Standard is #5 Language. The students were supposed to Demonstrate command of the conventions of English grammar and usage when writing or speaking, Demonstrate command of the conventions of English capitalization, punctuation, and spelling, Apply knowledge of language to understand how language functions in different contexts, Determine or clarify the meaning of unknown and multiple- meaning words and phrases based on appropriately complex reading and content, choosing flexibly from a variety of strategies, among others. This standard is like a summary of the students’ skills and what they are supposed to master based on the previous standards. I do believe that all of these standards are vital and one cannot exist without the others. It is a challenge doing all of these standards with students that don’t dominate the English language. Like I mentioned before my students, more than half of them, had difficulty with the language. My school is not the exception I believe that this happens with many other public schools in Puerto Rico. As a teacher we have to use these standards to help us guide us but, like I also mentioned before we have to make do with what we have and juggle with this until the students can achieve more. It is more difficult but it’s not impossible. We have to take these standards with tweezers and adapt them to the necessities of the students. Not always we have to adapt standards and take things slowly, but children come with these mental gaps and we have to help them. We cannot pretend like they’re not there and continue. If a teacher truly wants to help her students we have to teach, even if we have to start with more basic things. The trick is to use repetition and keep challenging them.