Hook Lesson Reflection

Yikes! Seeing myself on video is even more terrifying than it sounds (and it already sounded pretty terrifying!). However, I wanna talk about what I got from the video. I would like to start off with what I would not change about my lesson.

First off, I would like to keep folding the sheet of paper with the poem into quarters. My main objective with the lesson was to teach literary devices and I wanted the students to find examples from the poem to express each literary device. I think that writing on the back of the poem forces the student to concentrate harder on the line than writing on a separate sheet of paper would. I would leave in the background information about the author of the poem because background information never hurts when trying to decipher poetry.  I would also still pass out the oranges (because who doesn't like oranges?).

Now for the things I would change about the lesson. The first thing I would change is reading the poem out loud. Since I wrote the lesson for ninth graders, I believe that they are more than capable to read the poem themselves. I would add in a review of what the literary devices are. Since I've taken out the reading out loud, I think I would replace it with using the oranges to help the students remember what each literary device is. For example, one of the categories was metaphor. I would ask the student to make up a metaphor using an orange.

I think there are some things I could do to improve the lesson. I think I could have spoken a little louder. I had a hard time hearing myself at points. If I had a class room full of fourteen-year-olds, I doubt that they would stay as quiet as my graduate classmates. I could have also made the purpose of the lesson more clear of the students so they know what to expect and what to look for in the poem.

Overall, this was my first ever lesson and there is definitely room for improvement!