This week my mind has all been about the greater arch of my lesson. As I said last week I really wanted to try to keep my mind focused on how the component parts of my lesson fit together. Because of this I started working through the lesson calendar really looking at how my ideas might fit together. And it was at this point that I realized that little of my lesson actually fit together. I was working on a collection of singular lessons that only cursorily related to each other. This problem made me think of our conversations in class about not being able to assume that our students understand the information we expect them to know before we do our lesson.
So I started to imagine how I could bridge the lessons, how I could create lessons that would both connect them and also front load the ideas of each lesson as we went through the unit. One of the things I envisioned doing was an idea introduced to me by my colleague Chris Schroder. In his unit he situated his longer Young adult novel as an ongoing reading which each of the lessons throughout the unit would relate to where the students would be at that time of the lesson. In my unit my students will read the novel throughout the unit, each lesson being organized in order to relate to the place that the students are in the novel. I worry though that my students may not keep up with the reading and I am struggling with how I can asses and check in with my students about their readings in a way that will engage the students and not seem like a gotcha ploy. If anyone has any ideas I welcome some suggestions.
In that vein I am also struggling with deciding how much of the YA novel I am assigning to the students each week. I want to have the students read two or three chapters each week with a reading check at the end of the week. I worry that if I ask too little of them reading-wise that they will put it off or that we won't get through the novel in time. As well I worry that if I assign to much reading that the students (who have a history of not doing their reading) won't or won't be able to complete their work on time. Again if anyone has suggestions I welcome them!
So I started to imagine how I could bridge the lessons, how I could create lessons that would both connect them and also front load the ideas of each lesson as we went through the unit. One of the things I envisioned doing was an idea introduced to me by my colleague Chris Schroder. In his unit he situated his longer Young adult novel as an ongoing reading which each of the lessons throughout the unit would relate to where the students would be at that time of the lesson. In my unit my students will read the novel throughout the unit, each lesson being organized in order to relate to the place that the students are in the novel. I worry though that my students may not keep up with the reading and I am struggling with how I can asses and check in with my students about their readings in a way that will engage the students and not seem like a gotcha ploy. If anyone has any ideas I welcome some suggestions.
In that vein I am also struggling with deciding how much of the YA novel I am assigning to the students each week. I want to have the students read two or three chapters each week with a reading check at the end of the week. I worry that if I ask too little of them reading-wise that they will put it off or that we won't get through the novel in time. As well I worry that if I assign to much reading that the students (who have a history of not doing their reading) won't or won't be able to complete their work on time. Again if anyone has suggestions I welcome them!
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