Lesson Reflections

After my guided writing lesson plan, I was fairly nervous to get feedback from my host teacher. Not only had I not exactly followed her directions, I hadn't extended the lesson to a point that I believed was enriching for the children. However, after discussing the lesson with her, I felt much better about taking the liberties I did with her suggestions. She told me, "you didn't do exactly what I told you, you made it your own. You took the initiative with the kids and went with your gut." While I know if it had been my classroom, the students would have been using inventive writing instead of copying sentences, I was heartened by her words. It's possible that this classroom isn't quite as schooled-literacy based as I'd thought, and I appreciated the freedom to go further than a worksheet.

Even though my lesson didn't exactly push me to my creative limits, planning it gave me a lot of insight into what I think teaching should be about. Looking at those worksheets my teacher had given me and trying to plan a lesson with them felt wrong. I just couldn't do it. It wasn't fun for the kids, and it wasn't relevant to them. I now know that I believe that reading and writing needs to be interesting and relevant for children. Without this, they are not going to be motivated to learn anything.

Reading Mem Fox's Radical Reflections: Passionate Opinions on Teaching, Learning, and Living, over Thanksgiving break also brought me to several realizations about my own beliefs on literacy. Many things Fox pointed out, I hadn't thought about, but immediately clicked with me. In the beginning of the book, she explores why people write. What drives writers? She investigated her own feelings towards writing. First of all, she discovered that she wanted to demonstrate worthiness to those who asked her to write. She wanted to create a reaction in her audience - these people she was writing for. She used the phrase "ache with caring" to illustrate the way she felt about this - she ached with caring about what she was sharing and the response she was trying to achieve.

After reading this book, I realized what I wanted my own students to feel was similar to this. I wanted them to "ache with caring" about what they were writing, and the response they wanted to gain from their audiences. In order to do this, they need an audience. In this way, writing experiences must be authentic. Whether they are a letter or a story, children need to be writing with someone and some purpose in mind.

This lesson didn't sit well with me because it didn't hold with my own beliefs about writing. It did not have these four elements. If I had designed the lesson exactly the way I wanted in my own classroom, it would have been interesting, relevant, authentic, and purposeful. The students would be writing for someone, if only themselves. And because of these aspects, I believe they would have enjoyed the lesson and learned much more than they ever could from a worksheet.