Practice Teaching Exercise

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Practice Teaching Exercise

Instructions: Choose one of the four "Pillars of Teaching" presented in Woolfolk (Behavioral, Social Cognitive, Cognitive, or Constructivist) and develop an instructional activity for a specific age group. This short instructional activity (5-8 minutes maximum), will be delivered to the class during one of the final three weeks of class. Your lesson should involve primarily your teacher-led instruction, not showing a video or playing a digital game. Sign up for a presentation date here.

This instructional activity should demonstrate your ability to:

    1. Apply a particular learning theory,
    2. Adapt an instructional activity to a target age group,
    3. Develop specific learner objectives,
    4. Tie those objectives to specific observable behaviors (i.e., assessments), and
    5. Construct a coherent and appropriate lesson plan to demonstrate these elements.

Your task is to choose a learning theory and develop a lesson for a specific age group (Pre-K-12). You should not teach about the learning theory. Teach a particular piece of content (math, science, physical education, social studies, etc.) using your chosen theory. Your lesson should involve primarily your teacher-led instruction, not showing a video or playing a digital game.

Translating Learning Theories Into Practical Plans: It can be very hard to translate your theories into practical applications, but that is exactly what you'll be doing as a teacher every day, so this is your first chance to begin doing that in a formal matter. If you need more help in starting the process of translating our learning theories into practical plans, read, "Transforming Principles into Practice: Using Cognitive Active Learning Strategies in the High School Classroom," an article that discusses how to begin this process in a high school setting. Elementary and Special Education teacher candidates will also find useful suggestions and approaches in this article.

Tying Your Objectives to Assessments: Another important aspect of planning formal instruction is tying your goals/objectives to your assessments. You can't simply rely on head nods and eye contact to know whether your learners are getting what it is you're teaching. For this reason, make sure to clearly tie you objectives to specific measurable outcomes. A good way to do this is to write your learning goals in the format: "The Student Will Be Able To..." (TSWBAT). Then your assessment is the thing you said they were able to do. So if your goal is for each learner to be able to skip a rope 10 times, then your assessment would be to watch them skip a rope 10 times. See how it works? Tie your objectives clearly to your assessments.

Sometimes you want to assess at the end of the lesson. This is called summative assessment...the sum of all of your instruction. This is like a unit exam or end of unit portfolio. Often you will also want some feedback along the way...smaller assessments that give you feedback on how the learners are doing while the lesson is still going on. We call this formative assessment. If you need help coming up with ideas for quick and efficient formative assessments, check out this brief article, "Dipsticks: Efficient Ways to Check for Understanding."

You will deliver this lesson to your classmates (or a sub-set of the class). You are primarily responsible for developing the lesson, finding instructional aids and materials, preparing a lesson plan or outline, and delivering the lesson to the class on the pre-arranged day. Your lesson should involve primarily your teacher-led instruction, not showing a video or playing a digital game. Do not borrow a pre-planned lesson.

What you will hand in: You will prepare an outline describing the theory you've chosen, the age group for which the lesson is intended, the goals and objectives of the lesson, and an outline of the teaching behavior you'll enact (see below for the lesson plan template and a sample lesson plan). Note: A lesson plan should include enough information so that another teacher could pick it up and teach it, so be thorough and detailed in your description.

What you will do in class: You will deliver the instructional activity after first telling your classmates and the instructor(s) your goals and the target age-group. After the activity, the class will briefly discuss with you their reactions, questions, and suggestions for the work you've done.

The instructor(s) will assign a grade of up to 20

points for successful completion of this activity.

--> Blank Lesson Plan Template on GoogleDocs

Name: Ima Auggie

SAMPLE--Practice Teaching Exercise--Lesson Plan--SAMPLE

I. Learning Theory: Social/Cognitive     II. Target Age Group: 10 year olds

III. Objectives:

1. The learner will be able to define the term "noun"
2. The learner will be able to recognize 3 nouns
3. The learner will be able to generate and write 3 nouns

IV. At what level(s) of Bloom's taxonomy does this lesson aim? Remembering, understanding, and applying

V. Materials needed: Each student will need a pen/pencil, some paper, and access to a clean solid writing surface

VI. Complex social or thinking skills enhanced (if any): None

VII. Activity Outline (total time: Approx. 8 Minutes):

A. Anticipatory Set: Students will watch the brief video "A Noun is a Person Place or Thing." In this video, the concept of a noun is introduced, defined, and examples are provided in a brief animated format (3:02) http://youtu.be/h0m89e9oZko

B. Outline of Lesson Proper:

1. Each student is provided with a sheet of paper and a writing utensil. (1:00)

2. Question for all students to answer in writing: What is the definition of a noun? Announce, "At the end of the writing time, I will ask one or two of you to read their answer out loud, but I don't know who will be called, so everyone has to have a good answer ready." (2:00) Definition: Noun: a word (other than a pronoun) used to identify any of a class of people, places, or things (common noun), or to name a particular one of these (proper noun).

    a. Give students 30 seconds to 1 minute to write their answer.
    b. At random, 1-2 students will be asked to read their response.
    c. Does everyone understand this definition? Does anyone have anything to add? Other questions?

3. Read the following word list for the students (or write on board, 0:30):

    1. monk
    2. first
    3. calendar
    4. at
    5. why
    6. child
    7. San Francisco
    8. river
    9. high
    10. command

4. Which of these words are nouns? (correct responses are in bold). Write down on your paper the words you think are nouns. (0:30)

5. What questions do you have? Does everyone understand what is a noun? (0:30)

6. Please write down three new nouns on your sheet of paper. Do not use the words we just discussed in the list or the video. (0:30)

VIII. Evaluation Strategy (how will you know whether the learners "got it"?): Teacher will collect the sheets of paper and review the responses briefly to see whether and who understands the concept of a noun. If a student was not successful in defining, identifying, and generating nouns, put their sheets in a separate pile for follow up later in the day or tomorrow.