Dictionary Lesson Likes and Dislikes

Today I did my lesson plan with my literacy group on using dictionaries to help figure out the meaning of unfamiliar words. There were parts to this lesson that my students really enjoyed and other parts that they seemed bored and not interested in doing the activities. Surprisingly the ones I thought they would enjoy the most were the ones they were bored with and the ones I thought were not as interesting they liked more.

I started off by doing an activity that was not reading or writing based, just something fun as an opening activity to the day. Their task was to draw a picture with a partner by holding onto the same crayon and not talking at all. The only guideline was that they had to draw a snowman. The students really enjoyed this and after they did the activity I had them verbally  share one thing they liked about it. I suppose that was my way of incorporating literacy into the activity. I also plan to do something like this at the start of each time I meet with the students so that they have some sort of fun non-literacy based activity to look forward to.

Today was the the first time I actually realized what it is going to be like teaching, where you have this fantasy in your head of how a lesson is going to go but in reality things do not actually turn out that way. I definitely had this idea in my head that there would be parts of my lesson that the students would be really excited to do and others they would enjoy but were not quite as fun. However, today as I was actually teaching the lesson to my students I realized that what I think is going to be fun and exciting is not necessarily their idea of fun and exciting.

The other thing I realized is that it is hard to please every student at the same time. Some students will like to do something and other students will have no interest in doing it. This was very evident in today's lesson. I had one student say "this is no fun" and then a few of the other students were like "yes it is, I love doing this."

I found out that the student who was giving me the most difficulty today, and saying things were boring, likes to read and would prefer to do that so I am going to keep this in mind as I plan what to do in the future weeks. I am thinking about choosing a book and every week we read part of it. However, I know the reason this student thinks things are boring and would rather read a "fun book" ,as she called it, is because ELA is her area of weakness but it is important for her to continue doing literacy based activities besides just reading so that she can become better at it. I will take her interests into consideration but I cannot base an entire lesson on "fun reads" because I have four other students that I also need to try and please by doing lessons they enjoy too.

I hope next week all the students will find my lessons to be fun but at the same time they will be learning something too. Overall this week did go well and it brought some new perspectives to me on what being a teacher is going to be like.