What a humbling experience to have 5 guest speakers share their insight and experiences teaching. Throughout the course of this class I have always wondered about planning for a classroom of students that I do not know about. Thanks to Allison, who qwas a big breath of fresh air, I can assure myself that I don't have to plan for students I don't know cold turkey, rather ill have time to observe the students and pick my cooperating teacher's mind.  More of my personal fears of student teacher were slightly diminished and I feel I can moveforward with confidence.

Moving on to Rich and Jason, I picked their brain about  differentiation in teaching reading and writing. However, as I read Beach and Smago this semester, I thought of reading as something that can easily be implemented in different activities. Thanks to these guys, I was convinced that students NEED to be taught how to read, then read with them A LOT, and practice comprehension, and finally start writing. In my unit specifically, I did not focus on reading the whole play of Romeo and Juliet; only certain scenes relevant to my conceptual unit. I plan on having them watch clips of scenes, but I think having them listen to audio books will be helpful as well just to ensure they are reading. I implement a few reading strategies in my unit and I am following the advice that it is crucial to break down paragraphs and focus on what the main idea is, what the author is saying, and important vocabulary. Also, how important it is to do a lot of activities while reading a book to make the process 1.more enjoyable 2. Helpful to understanding central concepts

Last, but not least, the absolute most helpful thing that was clarified for me was the differece between unit goals and objectives. I have been struggling with this before  Cynthia  explained that goals are contextual and philosophical and require exploring. While objectives are tied to skill and standards, they should include a verb from Blooms taxonomy. And when I asked about differentiation in unit planning they suggested asking the mentor/cooperating teacher and asking the SPED  teacher, which will be bonus points and a good look for me. Also important questions that I should ask are:

Where do you want kids to be at at the end of the year?
Ask aboht verticle allignment.
How far should I plan to best prepare thrm?

Talking to them was extremly helpful and motivating!