Week 6 had Arya extremely anxious. Over the past two weeks in LAS 399, Arya and her classmates had been formulating 30 minute lesson plans on how to prepare for midterms, and Arya was petrified.
This was for a multitude of reasons. For starters, Arya was not the most creative of people... or creative at all for that matter. As a result, this lesson plan wasn't the most fun. In 399, she saw the activities some of the others and was so "wowed" by them that she felt really conflicted about the lesson plan she had devised. She wished she had the ability to give her class an experience like the others did, but didn't want to take their ideas. In the end, she stuck with her own plan.
One of the biggest trouble points Arya ran into with devising a lesson plan is she wasn't sure how to teach her students how to study. She and all her friends were humanities majors and these subjects had their own preferred methods of study. However, most of Arya's students were science majors and these subjects had totally different methods of preparation.
When she spoke to her TA of her confusion, Arya's TA suggested a note-taking practice activity. Consequently, Arya had students in the class teach each other how to take Cornell notes and mind-mapping notes before splitting them into groups for each of these two types of note taking and one for a "personal" method of note taking. Then, the whole class watched a video on active reading. Arya felt that this video was best so that over the course of one lesson, the students learned two new things. As the final part of the lesson, Arya's students compared their methods of note taking and discussed which ones worked best for them in different contexts.
Lastly, Arya's greatest fear was that the kids would be able to tell that the lesson had been formulated by her and not her TAs/professors. That they'd see holes in the material presented and tear it to shreds. That the students would take her suggestions as the Word of God, and in a situation where the skills they employed didn't work for them, would hold her responsible for poor grades.
Fortunately, nothing any of the students said or did showed Arya that they knew this lesson plan was her brainchild, and she came away feeling far more confident in her abilities as a teacher.
This was for a multitude of reasons. For starters, Arya was not the most creative of people... or creative at all for that matter. As a result, this lesson plan wasn't the most fun. In 399, she saw the activities some of the others and was so "wowed" by them that she felt really conflicted about the lesson plan she had devised. She wished she had the ability to give her class an experience like the others did, but didn't want to take their ideas. In the end, she stuck with her own plan.
One of the biggest trouble points Arya ran into with devising a lesson plan is she wasn't sure how to teach her students how to study. She and all her friends were humanities majors and these subjects had their own preferred methods of study. However, most of Arya's students were science majors and these subjects had totally different methods of preparation.
When she spoke to her TA of her confusion, Arya's TA suggested a note-taking practice activity. Consequently, Arya had students in the class teach each other how to take Cornell notes and mind-mapping notes before splitting them into groups for each of these two types of note taking and one for a "personal" method of note taking. Then, the whole class watched a video on active reading. Arya felt that this video was best so that over the course of one lesson, the students learned two new things. As the final part of the lesson, Arya's students compared their methods of note taking and discussed which ones worked best for them in different contexts.
Lastly, Arya's greatest fear was that the kids would be able to tell that the lesson had been formulated by her and not her TAs/professors. That they'd see holes in the material presented and tear it to shreds. That the students would take her suggestions as the Word of God, and in a situation where the skills they employed didn't work for them, would hold her responsible for poor grades.
Fortunately, nothing any of the students said or did showed Arya that they knew this lesson plan was her brainchild, and she came away feeling far more confident in her abilities as a teacher.
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