A Teaching

Field
Experience
By: Aspiring teacher Ms.
Porte
Me teaching the class about Carpe Diem (left) & working with a boy who has
cerebral palsy (right)
A short snippet video from the 1 day lesson: Assessing if they found where the If,
But, Then, & So were in the poem by Andrew Marvel, using questioning
techniques and discussion.
Group of students, classroom setting
Ponderosa High School in Shingle Springs, CA

High school seniors, 12th grade, most students are 17 years of age

British Literature ELA class, 28 students, class time: 55 mins

Day 4 lesson out of 5 day unit

1 ELL but 6 special needs (1 with cerebral palsy who had an aide in class with
him)
What did you learn?
This age of students can be very respectful and
understanding.
Prompting in discussion is a great tool.
To always be clear and explain everything
before setting them free to independent practice
to set them up for success.
Think about what you want to say and how you
want to say it.
How important it is to be fun, upbeat and silly
with the kids. This makes it more fun and they
don’t care how you act!
What went well?
Students were attentive and receptive.
They were very focused and serious throughout
the lesson, even though this was a fun listen
that involved music.
They treated me with respect after I informed
them why I was in their class teaching them.
They gave me some more teaching confidence.
I was able to walk around the room to assist with
students who needed help and this gave me a
feel for who understood it and who needed more
help.
Reflect on the plan. What did you enjoy?
The plan went well. I started with a KWL to stem off their prior learning in the unit,
as they had already created Carpe Diem poems themselves. I decided to try a
new approach to KWL and used the What? So What? Now what? - this was a new
way for students to think about what they know, want to learn and what was
learned. I enjoyed the audience and class in general because I was impressed
with how well they behaved despite my nerves and my being new. Given, the
teacher was in the class with us, but I enjoyed teaching them and getting their
feedback and answers to my questions about the poetry we read and songs we
listened to. We were able to met the learning objectives to compare and contrast
old and modern love poetry and it was fun to see how the students reacted in their
own attitudes about love and dating/courting based off the Renaissance. I learned
that I enjoy relating the texts to the real world the most when teaching.
What would you change?
1. I am not the best speaker and I believe it will come in time the more I teach
once I get more comfortable in front of a class, so I tend to say ‘Um’ and “like”
a lot in my explanations to the students. It comes off like I am not confident in
the content, so I want to change that.
2. I would change ad work on my time management, as we ran short on time for
analyzing the modern song by Billy Joel, Only the Good Die Young, at the
end of class.
3. I would have liked to continue and draw out the final essential question of the
day, Is there a Carpe Diem to this poem and song? How/why? How does it
apply to today? Perhaps done another graphic organizer Venn Diagram to
sum up what we can compare and contrast about the two periods.
What did your assessment(s) tell you?
There wasn’t time for the focus listing activity, but I was able to assess learning
through discussion and hearing from different students each time. Breaking it into
smaller pieces and black and white questions, such as “What does the speaker
want?” “What is he saying?” “What does he offer the woman in the poem?”
seemed to have made it a bit easier for students to grasp the concept, so I am
glad I started there. The following day, I would be sure to review and perhaps do a
quiz or activity to show me what they know. It would be something they would turn
in to me, so I can be sure to review again anything before closing the unit and
moving onto the next unit.
What did you learn about planning?
Planning is something that can be as in depth as you need. For me, some of the
ELA content needs to be reviewed as I can’t remember learning it in highschool,
so I feel best teaching the class if I am more prepared and knowledgeable about a
topic or text.

Having the 5 day unit plan and 1 day plan worksheets showed me how to lay
things out. It is a great chart to refer to and use for planning. It helped me see how
I may need to plan better in some areas. I learned how to plan for each stage of a
lesson, including link to prior knowledge, guided practice, independent practice,
closure.
Conclusion: What did you learn about teaching
(implementation & effectiveness of your plan?)
Because I was able to teach in a class, it was a good opportunity for me to test some of
these plans. It allowed me to be able to gauge and see when students seemed lost or on
the same page with me. When they did get lost, I got a bit nervous and struggled in my
mind as to what I needed to do or say to help them understand. Therefore, I realize that
as a teacher, there must be an established way of talking to your students that is clear,
basic and that overlaps with prior knowledge. This makes for a smooth transition and
then, there won’t be any of those blank stares. I also learned more about the importance
of letting students know what you will be teaching that day and why they need to learn it.
Students seem more engaged with more information and a purpose behind an idea/
concept/lesson/objective. Lastly, I learned that almost everything you talk about or teach
can be related to the real world in at least one way, so include this in the lesson.