When I first started with the unit plan, I knew that there was a lot that I didn’t know. However, while I was doing it, there was even more I hadn’t thought about than I originally believed! First, it takes a lot of time. When I am teaching, I probably won’t be quite as detailed with each individual lesson, however, all the details that were required in the assignment, I will have to think about. Hopefully, the longer I am a teacher, the more natural all of these questions and assignments will become. Even more so than my stresses with creating the lessons, is my concern that I am reaching all of my students on some level. From working with my class this semester I have realized how many different needs must be met with each lesson to really help all of the students.
One of the other things that I was struggling with was what the purpose was of my lesson. There were things that I knew that I wanted to accomplish, such as reading comprehension and writing lessons, but I also wanted to be sure that more than just reading and writing was covered. Going through all of the standards, sometimes it seemed that there wasn’t as much room for identity searching and personal growth as I would have liked. For instance, I felt that my students really needed exposure to racial diversity and stereotypes. But, there were some days that I think we were covering more personal reflecting and growth than anything else.
As the students are learning in the classroom, I am also hoping that they will take more from the class than just writing and reading knowledge. There are so many more literacies that I would like my students to expand upon. Hopefully through all the group work and developing a sense of community in the classroom, my students will really be able to develop their social skills and their social literacies. I would also like my students to expand their literacies in the other performing art areas. I am hoping to include art work, music composition or analysis, photography ect. so that my students have a broader range of literacies and understanding of these literacies. Another aspect that this semester I have come to realize is imperative to learn is technology. If the students are not exposed to it and learn from it, then when they get older they are at a clear disadvantage to the other students. Thus, through their education I would like to have them look up web pages like they did for this unit plan or do something like have email conferences with people from other countries or states.
Another dilemma I found myself having during the unit plan was having difficulty knowing what the level of my class would be at as well as time restrictions. I worked with a short story by Morrison, but I think that might be too advanced for middle school. However, because I think it is a good story and something they could learn from, I think with patience and working together as a class, my students would understand it. As far as the time restraints go, I think that that will only come with teaching experience and understanding the different classes that I have and their dynamics. Additionally, when I am a teacher, I am just going to add in days for overflow. Hopefully my students will be so engaged with the topics, they will really enjoy talking to each other about them. Also, another concern if I were to teach middle school is that I have a limited idea about what I would teach because I think that most of the books I read and remember are books that students would read in high school, not middle school. Over the next two years I have to work on the amount of books I read that I could teach for both middle school and high school.
Overall, I am really happy with my unit. I think that it is a lesson that my student will be interested in and really learn from. I think that the follow up unit would have to be a lighter unit and have more creative activities in it that would involve things like music and art to balance so much reading and writing. However, for the topic of stereotypes I think that the lesson needed to be a bit more serious and reflective. Through this I have learned that it takes a lot of time and work in order to make a lesson plan that really benefits all people. There are so many aspects of lesson planning that I hadn’t thought of. Even the little things like how to arrange groups I have never thought of in detail. I sort of just assumed that when the time came, I would be able to assess the students and put them into groups accordingly. I also hope to teach my students strategies in an engaging manner so they are not bored but they are learning.
One of the things that I am unsure of right now is how I am going to create enough unit plans to last an entire year. Granted, there are so many topics to choose from and so many lessons to be learned, but now it seems like a daunting task. I am also slightly unsure of how I am going to incorporate classroom management. By having the opportunity to teach this semester, I have started to understand how my classroom management style is going to be, but I am still struggling to find the middle between teacher and friend. Overall, creating this unit plan was a wonderful learning experience for me.
