Continuing the Unit

For years, I have been "warned" about how much hard work goes into being a teacher, I've always believed that, but this unit plan is putting it into perspective for me. There's a lot of pressure that comes with unit planning. Everything from choosing the literature, to the assignments and activities - all important tasks that are also time consuming.

This week Stela and I were planning on bringing in our rationale outline and assessment. I've been doing pretty well with the outline, but I haven't dedicated much time to the assessment yet. It's definitely a process - and I'm trying my best to not get frustrated.

I'm learning a lot about myself as a teacher as well. I've noticed that I lean towards discussion and critical thinking based activities and assessments. I have heard that being a discussion-based teacher is a bit ambitious, I agree, but I also think I could do it. I caught a glimpse of it during my 330 lesson. Students told me that they loved discussing passages (it's far from the norm in their class).

Anyways, I received a lot of helpful feedback last week after presenting my calendar. I plan to rework many of the things that were addressed. I like the idea of assigning several passages of The Tempest and then having discussion, arguing how the passages portray the island as a utopia or dystopia.
I wasn't thinking as clearly as I should have been when I made the calendar. Planning a lesson seems much easier on paper - but time is one of the hardest things to plan for. I need to extend a few lessons in order to make time for scaffolding and introducing the texts. I think I'm a bit ambitious again because my students are high honors level, and are pretty great at grasping lessons and plans quickly. But as I mentioned, I will try to expand some lessons over several days.

One of my assessments includes a personal reflection on the students' work throughout the semester. That fits in with NWP's "Ask students to reflect on and write about their writing".

Another thing I have to work on is my teacher log. I didn't realize that I wasn't incorporating enough of the reading in my writing...There's a lot of work left to do, so I better keep going. Hope all is well with you guys!

Sam