Reading in the Middle, Junior and Senior High Schools, Spring, 2010

When I was looking through the lesson plans I was focusing more on elementary lesson plans. I hope to not only work with students with disabilities but also kindergarten students. I finally found a lesson plan that I was really interested in.

This lesson is A Getting Acquainted Activity with "My Teacher's Secret Life". This is a good lesson for helping students get to know each other and the teacher at the beginning of the school year. The first day the teacher reads the book "My Teacher's Secret Life" by Stephen Krensky to the class. While the teacher reads this book they ask questions about it to keep the students engagement in the book. The teacher will then ask the students what they do outside of school. The teacher will chart what the students say and give each student a chance to after. Then after that they will ask what the students think the teacher does outside of school and the teacher will chart those answers too. The students have the chance to look around the room to get clues to what the teacher does outside of school.

The teacher will then give each student a stapleless book, which is a book that is made out of paper and scissors. Using this book students will go home and with the help of their parents draw pictures that represent there time outside of school. They can then bring in pictures of items they choose and then write at least two sentences about the pictures. The students will then each share their stapleless books with each other.

I think this is a great lesson for the students to get to know each other and the teacher better. It gets them interacting with each other and gets them to show their creativity. This lesson can also be a good assessment of their writing skills at the beginning of the year. It is a great start of the year icebreaker for both students and teacher.

It's always bizarre to run into your teacher outside of class. As students, we forget that teachers are people. So this is an interesting concept to remind students that teachers are people, too.

I think that the anticipation guide was a great way to start off an article. It really got me interested and got me thinking about what was in the article before even reading it. It also made me understand my responses before better when, after I read the article, I was able to go back and redo the responses. The article itself was very interesting. I had never before thought of the internet as a way of equalizing and rewiring our brains. I had never really thought about the internet as being different for men and women and I really enjoyed reading it.