Required Blog #2

Of all the lessons I've taught so far (like how I used the word "all" to make it seem impressive?), the lessons on essay writing - particularly organizing thoughts during the prewriting stage were most successful. I think this can be attributed to a number of reasons: 1) It's easy. There's not much writing involved. It's simply writing whatever comes into your mind, organizing it into good or bad, and then choosing the three most quantifiable subjects. 2) It was the first stage of writing, so the students hadn't had time to become bored yet. 3) I did examples with people they liked: Michael Jordan, Tupac, etc. I feel like I also did a good job of explaining what happens in my head when I'm organizing thoughts.
My worst lesson was probably the one on using context clues. I think most of this boils down to preparation. It was something I hadn't taught before and had to sort of throw together at the last minute because things we had originally planned for that period didn't work out (pre-test, procedures didn't take as long as anticipated, etc.). Also, the lesson was fairly lecture-oriented, and I still haven't figured out a solution to keep students' attention for 50 minutes when you're just talking to them. (I'm not sure one exists.)
My instructional procedures tend to mimic those that I used most commonly during the end of the regular school year: heavy on the set and heavy on the examples. For me, so many terms and concepts in Literature and English are defined very vaguely, that the only way to explain a concept is to give example after example. Also, I've found if you lose a kid at the beginning of the lesson, it's twice as hard to get him back. For these reasons, I usually run out of time when I'm allowing for independent practice and I consistently squeeze my closure into about 30 seconds.
I differentiated instruction by doing a lot of activities. Typically, I'll over dozens of verbal examples and samples throughout a lesson. Also, I've made it a goal to provide a visual handout for almost every lesson so that students can organize their thoughts. I've done a lot of group activities, allowing students to move around the room and build things with their hands. I think mostly though, I've given students lots of freedom in their assignments to choose what interests them. I realize that's not technically a "learning modality," but I still feel like differentiated is all about freedom of choice, which I'm definately trying to provide.
I think students' performance would be enhanced with more consistency among teachers. Because of the need to have four teachers teach so many lessons, it's extremely difficult to have the same teacher teach the same concept thoroughly. For example, I started a lesson using characterization in "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" only to have it completed by two other teachers. Although I think there are definately benefits to this tactic, the students become confused by three different teachers' methods, priorities on what's important in the story, and different interpretations. To make it even worse, those teachers weren't in the room the entire time when the other was teaching because we were planning or conferencing. I think more time would definately also be an advantage, but I guess that's not the intention of summer school.