Reflection of Lesson 1

Lesson 1 Reflection:

My first lesson was an introduction to rhyming words. I started the lesson by reading some poetry where the lines ended with rhyming words. The class responded really well to the poetry. They also understood the concept of the rhymes. After reading the poems we did the rhyming activity. The activity started off a little slow because it was difficult for the students to come up with their own words. I was able to assess this in the middle of the activity and I changed the rules to the activity. We then selected one word and tried to come up with as many rhyming words as we could for that word. If we could not figure out anymore  rhyming words for that word, the class selected a new word to find rhyming words for. Afterwards, students completed a worksheet where they had to come up with 5 rhyming words for a specific word. I walked around the room to gauge where students were and how they were fairing with coming up with rhyming words. I noticed that although the students understood the concepts of rhymes it was difficult for them to come up with actual rhymes for the words. This let me know that I would have to do a mini-lesson on strategies for coming up with rhyming words in which I did the following day. If I were to do the lesson again this is something I would include a portion about strategies for developing rhyming words. Although they were able to come up with some rhyming words, students were not able to do it effectively or timely. Strategies for coming up with rhyming words will help students find words quicker which will be more beneficial when it is time for students to write poems containing rhyming words. You do not want students spending most of their time trying to think of rhyming words instead of writing. My core practice focuses on assessing students and I was able to do this during the lesson and it allowed me to adjust the lesson appropriately at the time. It also helped me to plan appropriately to extend my students' learning.I sort of remembered this when planning instead of writing it down. Writing my notes down will help me to further my professional development with my core practice. Overall, the lesson went fairly well.  I also learned that when my students are exposed to new forms of literacy they really feed into it which was a good thing to see.