Parts of Speech Lesson Plan, Take 1: Assignment 3B

After I gave my students their pre-assessments, I decided to continue on with my original lesson plan for Monday’s class.  Given my student’s work schedules, I had to present the lesson on a different night of the week from when I presented the pre-assessment.  In my junior high classroom, however, the pre-assessment, presentation, review sheet, and post-assessment will all occur in the same class period.  

I started the lesson off with a power point presentation, but before the presentation began, I reminded my students to take notes as they would need them to complete the worksheet later.  When I teach parts of speech, I use this wonderful power point created by Capital Community College.  Its graphics and sound effects are far beyond anything I could create, so I borrowed it. 

I expected my presentation to take about 10 minutes.  It took 17.  Perhaps I speak too much during each slide.  I will need to work on that.  This seems to be a trend with my expectations; things always take longer than planned. 

 

After the presentation, I passed out the parts of speech worksheet which consists of 20 questions (2 -3 per part of speech).  Since I am dealing with such a small class, I paired Ryan with Tessa, and Carol with Matt (i.e. Top 1/3 students with bottom 1/3 students).   I walked around the table to monitor.  The four students asked two questions of me the entire time. After about 7 minutes of working, I showed the students this video that can be found on youtube.  It reiterates the 8 parts of speech. I have found that re-teaching in different words and formats, even within the same lesson, can help me reach more students and increase their retention of the material.  One student might remember the video’s information, while another might remember an example from the power point.  Still another might recall an actual phrase that I used to explain a concept during the presentation.  In any event, after the 7-8 minute video, the students went on to finish their worksheets, and after about 10 minutes, I collected the worksheets.   

Before I dismissed the students, I asked for the Fist of Five; how confident did the students feel about their parts of speech knowledge?  I briefly explained the concept to them.  Because I have only 4 students, I felt I knew what to expect; I assumed the pre-assessment results would reflect the post-assessment’s.  I was surprised, however.  Matt and Carol held up 5’s and Tessa and Ryan held up 4’s.  Given their pre-assessment scores, I assumed Matt and Tessa would not feel comfortable or want to learn or retain anything dealing with grammar; I expected these two to show me 3’s and 4’s.  I was wrong.  They both said they just needed a quick reminder of the definitions of the eight parts of speech and examples of the way each part works in a sentence. 

Later, I graded the worksheets. 

Worksheet results:

Carol & Matt: +19/20

Ryan & Tessa: +17/20

Both groups did very well.  Carol and Matt missed an adverb in one of the sentences and Ryan and Tessa missed an adverb, a conjunction, and failed to create a sentence with a pronoun.  I did show the students their grades, and all could see why they had missed the questions that they had. 

What did I learn and what would I change?

From this assignment, I learned that I need to work on my time management.  I tend to assume that pre-assessment, presentations, worksheet completion, and post-assessment will all take far less time than they actually do.  In reality, I wouldn’t have been able to present all that I had planned for Monday: the pre-assessment took the students 20 minutes, the power point presentation took me 17 minutes, the video was 7.5, the worksheet 17, and the post-assessment 3.  This means it took me 64.5 minutes to get through this lesson.  That’s a FAILED lesson plan if I’ve ever seen one; the students wouldn’t have been in class long enough to finish the worksheet.  I can definitely cut time off of my power point presentation and the pre-assessment.  That should do the trick…just barely. 

 What did I enjoy?

I really enjoy grammar in general, so I had some fun teaching my family members this small bit of content.  In general though, I much prefer being the “guide on the side” as opposed to the “sage on the stage”.  The moments I enjoyed the most occurred when I was monitoring and assisting my students as they completed their worksheets.  I enjoyed hearing them talk their way through each problem and use collaboration to find the correct answer.  I enjoyed hearing their thought processes as they faced these grammar problems; I find it interesting because almost everyone approaches the problem in a different way or rationalizes the correct answer differently. 

Overall, this was a good practice run for me.  It has reminded me to overestimate the time required to execute a lesson plan. 

Pre-assessment, Take 1: Assignment 3A

Pre-assessment is important to a teacher.  It allows the instructor to get a sense of what his or her students know and do not know.  With pre-assessment information, teachers can craft a lesson plan or plans that teach the students what they do not know and quickly review information that they have already mastered.

I am going to present a grammar unit to a class of eighth grade students, and I know that they’ve already had grammar – it’s not a foreign concept to them.  They’ve essentially been learning grammar since they stepped foot on their elementary school campus, and it’s likely that they were hearing and learning it at home before that.  This does not mean, however, that each of my students will have the same prior knowledge.  Because I’m working at the junior high level, my class will be made up of students from various elementary schools.  My students’ K-6 teachers are going to have stressed different grammatical topics.  In addition, each student will have retained different information about grammar.  This is why it will be important for me to pre-assess these eighth graders; they are going to know some things already, and I need to figure out what those things are so I do not waste time harping on something like nouns when the majority of students feel comfortable with nouns. 

That's me...teaching!

 

I used my Monday pre-assessment (a multiple choice test of 30 questions covering the eight parts of speech, subjects and predicates, clauses, comma splices, run-ons, fragments, and active and passive voice) to determine the grammatical knowledge of four of my family members as I do not have a class of my own (yet).  Before my “students”, Carol, Ryan, Tessa, and Matt, took the quiz, I let them know that they would receive full credit for completing all 30 questions to the best of their ability and that they would have 10 minutes to complete their task.  I also announced that I would be suspicious of the effort exerted by any student if he or she turned in a test after only 4 minutes.   After much snickering and teacher jokes, it took the four about 20 minutes (I let them have extra time)to complete the multiple choice test; this took far longer than I thought it would, so I will need to delete about half of the questions when I use this pre-assessment in an English Language Arts class.  The assessment findings were as follows:

Carol: +28/30

Matt: +15/30

Ryan: +24/30

Tessa: +18/30

 

When I asked the students how they felt about the test, Carol felt confident, but the other three admitted to feelings of inadequacy and remembered that they used to “know this stuff”.  However, all of them were collectively baffled by the terms “comma splice, run-on, and fragment”.  And each student demonstrated a different weakness.  Ryan and Tessa missed most of their points in the parts of speech section.  Carol only missed 2 questions, and both of them dealt with pronouns.  Matthew had the most trouble with comma splices, run-ons, and fragments.  To clarify, I asked Carol, Ryan, and Tessa how they had done so well on the comma splice/fragment/run-on section if they were unfamiliar with the terms.  In so many words, they let me know that these rules of grammar were innate for them:

“I could see there was a period missing and that the sentence was running on and on, so I figured that was a run-on.”  -- Ryan

“Fragments are by definition incomplete pieces of a greater whole, so I guessed that a fragment was an incomplete sentence” -- Tessa

                                          Carol   Ryan          Matt  Tessa

Perhaps my test subjects, being college-educated teachers, engineers, and medical consultants, were not the best indicators of the results that would be submitted by eighth grade students, but…it was the best class I could access at this time. 

The weaknesses presented by my students were varied.  On the other hand, most students understood nouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, interjections, subjects, predicates, and active and passive voice.  If this were a real class, these strengths and weaknesses would help me decide what to spend more time explaining during the power point presentation. 

Overall, I feel that my pre-assessment and rubric were very effective.  The pre-assessment multiple-choice test got my students thinking about grammar they hadn’t touched upon in years.  They began reactivating that stored information.  The only thing I would change is the number of questions; I will trim the number of problems from 30 to 15.  In addition, I found that my rubric proved to be fair; this pre-test is not an assignment that was or should be graded.  Instead, points were earned for effort.

Grasha-Riechmann Teaching and Learning Styles

The last surveys I had the pleasure of taking were the Grasha-Riechmann Teaching and Learning Style Surveys. 

My Learning Style results were as follows:

Independent     4.2
Avoidant          2
Collaborative   4.6
Dependent       4.2
Competitive     2.8
Participant       3.9

Thus, I am very collaborative as a learner with equal parts dependence and independence.  I would like to think that this makes me very adaptable to most learning situations and therefore able to understand how many students are learning.  I may have some trouble with avoidant learners though.  I do not seem to be very competitive either....but competition is a learning style that may appeal to many students, so I will find a way to incorporate that into my lesson creation in the future. 

My Teaching Style results were as follows:

Expert                    3.625
Formal Authority   4.25
Personal Model      4
Facilitator               4.75
Delegator                4

According to these results, I function, or see myself functioning most, as a facilitator and a formal authority.  As stated in this article, facilitators emphasize the personal nature of teacher-student interactions.  This type of teacher guides and consults with students.  The drawback, however, is that this style of teaching can be time consuming and ineffective, especially when a more direct approach could be used.  I'll have to watch out for this.  Formal authorities focus on clear expectations and acceptable ways of doing things.  This can lead to the teacher dealing with the students in a rigid, standardized way, however.  It seems like a combination of these two styles, facilitator and formal authority, will help me help my students be successful.  I will be rigid, but not so rigid that I can't build strong teacher-student relationships. 

Based on these surveys, I should be able to give the students boundaries while supporting them in their academic endeavors. 

Learning Style Results

I feel that I have been a student for much of my life -- and I don't mean a "student of life", although that applies to everyone, I think.  I mean I am a student in the academic sense; one who is always studying, writing essays, or in class.  Although I feel I have this learning thing down, it never hurts to learn more myself.  One never can visit metacognition often enough...

According to NC State University's Index of Learning Styles Questionnaire, these are my learning style scores:

Active/Reflective Learner?  

My score:    3   Active Learner

Sensing/Intuitive Learner?

My Score:   3   Sensing Learner

Visual/Verbal Learner?

My Score:   1   Visual Learner

Sequential/Global Learner?

My Score:   1   Global Learner

Because ALL of my scores were between 1 and 3, the results state that I am, "fairly well balanced on the two dimensions of that scale."  Essentially, I can learn in many different ways which is exciting to know. 

I believe the fact that I can learn in all ways will benefit my students in the future.  If I can learn through most mediums, then I should be able to teach through most mediums, thereby reaching many or most students with multiple teaching strategies. It will hopefully be a win-win situation! 


 

The MMDI

 As I begin my journey into teaching, it's probably best that I first explore how I operate in the world.  The Mental Muscle Diagram Indicator test (MMDI) is a good place for me to start.  I took the test and my results were as follows:

ISTJ  (Introverted, Sensing, Thinking, and Judging)

The test pegged me as "in-between" personality types.  I am complex and unique.  I value clarity, knowledge, experience, a well-organized world, and specific objectives.   I especially like to have a plan (I'm not as comfortable with "winging it"). 

I agree with most of what the test told me about my personality and often feel that my personality did affect my choice to be a Language Arts teacher.  For example, I really enjoy grammar because there are specific rules that must be followed.  At the same time, I enjoy language arts because it allows for the freedom of expression, and through that freedom, I can break away from the rigid rules of grammar, mechanics, and usage.  I am very "in-between".  I want to have my cake and eat it too, perhaps, and Language Arts provides me that outlet and that cake!

I think my personality will affect my relationship with my students in a positive way.  I will be a good teacher because I value organization and specific objectives.  As long as I communicate effectively with my students, they should be able to learn something from me.  I am worried about the introversion, however.  Although I was about half and half introverted/extroverted, I was a smidge more introverted.  I will work to make sure that introversion does not take over -- that would not benefit my students.