Learning from Lessson

This week I co-taught a lesson with my Dyad partner on Academic Conversation to three blocks of 8^th graders. It was a very interesting and helpful experience. We worked really hard to plan out the lesson and we thought about mostly everything. At least that is what we thought until we taught it.

We decided that for two blocks we would each have a bigger part to take over. For the first block I lead the conversation the second time my partners did it. By the third time we figured what we each did best and co-taught the lesson. Having the opportunity to observe and listen to each other was very valuable.

By the end of the experience I learned that my level of enthusiasm for the topic we teach is supper important. I was definitely not into H.P. Lovecraft’s dark style of writing or our other choice Edgar Allen Poe. Among the things that we did not plan for was that students would read the poem completely wrong and make the story more evil than it really was. Also we did not think about the chaos it would be to have 8^th graders sit in a circle for academic conversation.

In the end, the students did demonstrate that they could have Academic Conversation without too much drama. Yet it took quite a bit to get them focused enough to do so.

I guess the thing that I struggled with the most was dealing with a genre that I did not like, what could I have done to not fixate on what I did not like?