First language arts lesson I have taught and it went pretty well.  It would be nice to do a middle school setting to see how I can improve it from class to class.

There was a lot to get through and I actually thought that I would have time left over.  I didn’t realize how much time the students needed to research for the countries.  I even had some websites for them to start off with and they still were taking a while.  The teacher and I both found out that the students need work on how to write key words when researching topics.  There were not specific enough in their searches and that was the problem.  I wish there would be time to do a lesson on how to research and write key words when working with the internet.

A lot of the students did great today and were very excited to pick the country out of a bag.  They were also excited to use the net books.  Computer time does not happen too much for them so this was a great opportunity.  When working with computers the teacher and I circulated the room to make sure they were on appropriate sites.  About half the class got the whole graphic organizer filled out and started writing their poems so they did not have too much to do tonight for homework.  Overall I wanted this to be a work in progress with a different figurative language each day and the end project would be put together throughout the week but now it turned into a final project due each day.  Tomorrow I will see how that turns out.  My directions were simple and I repeated a lot, but some students still are having a hard time understanding what they actually needed to do.

Next time I would take out the finding another example from the internet or a book or something because there is too much for them to do. I want them to focus on the poem and the concept.  In my classroom I would also have more time and would like a lab day to put it all together.

Management was not an issue, the students were all attentive and working on the assignment.

Overall this lesson went well and the students did a great job with understanding what an acrostic poem was and how to write it.  They did great with research once they knew what to type in to find information better.  They listened well and weren’t afraid to ask questions of me.