Reflection #1: These are my confessions...about wanting to make each and every lesson meaningful for students

I have a confession.

Here it comes…are you ready?

I AM NOT SPONTANEOUS.  I love planning, and I believe planning is the key to success.

While this may not seem like an earth-shattering declaration by any means, it is one that I think reveals a lot about me as a person, but especially about me as an educator. I believe that most activities within a classroom should be planned with purposeful intent.  I believe that units and activities within these units should all be scheduled strategically so that each lesson builds upon the previous one and successfully sets up the one to follow.  I believe that if students don’t see the connection between where they’ve been and where they’re headed, that they will become so lost, confused, and misguided that they give up and stop trying to make sense of what is being thrown at them.

In other words, the flow of a curriculum is of the utmost importance.

And while some people may disagree and believe in a more “organic” classroom, I have quite a few scholarly educators who are on my side. For example,  Daniel Brahier states in his book Teaching Secondary and Middle School Mathematics (2010) that “curriculum not only is about what is being taught and how it is taught but also is concerned with how big ideas are emphasized and the order in which topics are introduced” (p. 30). 

While this statement is intended for a mathematical setting, I know the same applies for an English classroom.  Students need to be introduced to literary and writing concepts in a way that makes the relationship and connections between them extremely obvious.  For example, if students can see how highlighting and annotating texts will in turn help them support their stance in an argumentative paper, then they will much likely gain more from both activities than if they feel they are aimlessly going about each one.  

Unfortunately, creating a seamless transition from one lesson plan to the next is much easier said than done. Especially as a new teacher I feel extremely overwhelmed when thinking about how I’m going to create this almighty flow that I’ve deemed oh so important.  However, there are two simple items that I think I can incorporate into my classes that will allow me to easily help students recall what they’ve already learned while also preview what they’re going to learn.

Bellwork and exit slips seem to be undervalued by many of the teachers that I’ve observed throughout the past two years.  While bellwork has the potential to reinforce what was learned the day before, or to introduce a new topic, they treat it almost as a nuisance; something that has to be completed, but isn’t worth spending much time over.  Nothing frustrates me more than a teacher who assigns bellwork but then never takes the time to go over the answer and discuss it with the class. WHAT IS THE POINT OF THAT?  Bellwork should serve a purpose.

Fortunately, Randy Bomer provides this purpose in his text Building Adolescent Literacy in Today’s English Classrooms (2011).  He mentions that mini lessons are a great way to start the class and give students a preview of what they are going to be working on that day (16).  My thought is, what better way to start off this mini lesson than to use the bellwork problem as the introduction? This will then get the students’ brain focused on the task at hand, while also giving them a sense of direction and a general concept of what they should be taking away from the day’s lesson.  Bomer (2011) also mentions that at the end of a class period, the teacher should schedule five minutes simply for student reflection (16). I think this is the prime time to assign an exit slip which will 1) reiterate the main points of the lesson that day and 2) preview the content for tomorrow.

With all of this being said, I would love to put my theory into practice and see if bellwork and exit slips can work together in order to create the connections that are so necessary for student success.  This theory may be a complete fantasy that has no chance of working in the real-world; however, I think that with a few tries and adaptations, I can really make bellwork and exit slips work in my favor as well as the students’.