Vocabulary Lesson
For this lesson, we were required to teach a small group of students from our class vocabulary from our unit. In my vocabulary lesson, I chose 9 adjectives in Spanish to teach my three students that would be helpful in my family unit. With these 9 adjectives, my students will be able to describe themselves and their family members in Spanish. (Above are my lesson plan and video)
I tagged this to P.C. 4.1: Candidates accurately communicate central concepts of the discipline. In my lesson, one of the concepts I taught was describing a person using adjectives in Spanish. In order to do this, I had to teach my students the expression "Yo soy" which means "I am" in English. Moreover, I had to teach them key Spanish vocabulary for them to use descriptive details about themselves and members of their family in their speech and writing.
I also tagged this to P.C. 6.1: Candidates implement multiple methods of assessment to monitor learning progress to inform instructional practice. One of my informal assessments was doing a listening activity through actions where I had each student come up with an action to associate with a particular vocabulary word. We did this with the entire class and I adjusted how many words to teach them based on how well each student seemed to be remembering each vocabulary word. When I observed that the listening activity was helpful and each student seemed to be confident with the vocabulary, I adjusted my lesson accordingly; I originally was only going to teach them 5 adjectives in Spanish, but I increased it to 9 adjectives. Lastly, I did an exit card and had students put all their materials away so I could fully assess how much vocabulary they were able to recall from the lesson.
Finally, I tagged this to P.C. 8.2: Candidates use a variety of instructional strategies to encourage learners to build skills to apply knowledge in meaningful ways. In the beginning of the lesson, I initiated a whip so each of my student's voices were heard. Furthermore, my listening activity was very helpful for those that struggle to remember vocabulary because it is a more engaging way to drill the vocabulary into your head. I also did a drawing activity so students could have more ways to visually represent each vocabulary word in a way that worked for them.
After watching my video, I have learned a lot about myself as a teacher. One thing I learned is that I believe I foster a calm, comfortable environment in my classroom. None of my students seemed stressed or overwhelmed and I hope to foster a similar environment in my future classroom. Also, I was pleased with how I was able to engage my students. Throughout the listening activity, my students were smiling and enjoying the process of learning. In my lesson, I have also learned that when teaching vocabulary, it is important to teach students tips and tricks on how to remember vocabulary well. After students saw how helpful doing an action for each vocabulary word was and visually representing each vocabulary word in drawings, they will be more inclined to use these techniques in the future. In my next steps, I want to become a little less laid-back as a teacher because I don't want to be like a friend to my students; I need to fulfill my position of authority well. Furthermore, when teaching vocabulary to my future students, I want to teach them about context clues to help them figure out words they don't know in Spanish.
I like how you were able to adapt on the fly and increase to 9 adjectives, it shows enormous flexibility. I wonder if you being laid back as a teacher helped this more, instead of taking away from it as you suggested.
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