9/27

After reading Chapter 3 in Anthology, I formed a lot of opinions of my own about how I feel about lesson plans. I do agree that good planning is crucial to make sure the lesson has a purpose and that accomplishments are made from it. I don't think its the end of the world if the lesson doesn't go completely as planned, IF the main objectives are still accomplished. I'm aware that questions will pop up during class and the schedule might not go exactly as it should. I believe that forming a meaningful lesson plan is going to take a lot of trial and error and experience. I think the more experience we gain, the more we can make adjustments to our lesson plan to make them turn out better the next time. This is where the evaluation aspect of the lesson plan will really come into play. Each time we evaluate our lesson plan, we can improve it for the next time or find out what worked and what didn't work depending on the students, environment, resources available, etc. Next year I will be doing PDS in Little Village, Chicago, which is basically a full year of student teaching before I'm completely on my own in the classroom. The nice part about this is, I will have a full year of trial and error with lesson plans before I have my own classroom. I can get opinions from the students as well as my cooperating teacher to evaluate the lessons that I'm planning.

As far as curriculums go, I agree with what the author said at the end of the chapter. The perfect curriculum would really be a blend of all three because it would include the content, objectives, and the process. This is very similar to how I feel with the different methods and approaches that are available. Instead of choosing one particular way that is exclusive and doesn't include a little bit of everything for the variety of students and the variety of needs, choose something that can capture a little bit of everything to accommodate more for the students. For example, instead of choosing one approach that only covers grammar, but not communicative teaching, why not choose one that includes some of each? Each student isn't going to have the same needs and some students might need one more than the othe. By choosing a curriculum or approach that is all inclusive we can make sure we are really accommodating the diverse needs of our students.