Concerning Our First Session

Dear English Teachers,

It was a pleasure meeting each of you on Thursday. I appreciate your candor and your enthusiasm, and I look forward to our weeks together. I will be out of town this weekend on a trip to San Antonio with our school's Academic Team, but will be back on Tuesday. By Wednesday, I should be caught up with any concerns that you post. I look forward to hearing from you.

You should begin thinking about the lesson that you're planning to prepare and video, as well as who your partner will be. In terms of lessons, I sometimes think that less is more. You want to select a strategy or an approach based on the needs and abilities of your students. Also, because you will be videotaping and analyzing your lesson, keep the scope to a reasonable level.

Concerning topics, think about a lesson that will showcase your work as a teacher and your students' strengths. Think about a lesson that ties in with one of the models of teaching that you're currently studying (e.g., cooperative learning, inquiry learning, community of learners, zone of proximal development, and the like). You only have so much time in this short, hurried class, so try to "tie" these various elements together. In essence, try not to become overwhelmed and do what you can in the time that you have--especially considering all the pressures of bringing the school year (in most cases) to an end.

In the past, students have considered the following types of lessons:

--reader-response lesson
--writing to learn activity
--prereading techniques to help students move "into" a piece of text/work of literature
--oral communications skills
--reader's theatre activity
--poetry writing
--poetry analysis
--modeled writing
--partner reading comprehension work
--small-group reading comprehension work
--imaginative explorations (a lesson that might tie together art, music, writing, and reading)
--vocabulary development work (themed words for a particular work of literature)
--a revision/editing workshop
--a bridging lesson that links prior knowledge (background information) with new material
--a language lesson for a class currently in the middle of a novel
--other topics of interest


Give some thought to your possible lesson and discuss it with your partner. Feel free to run it by me here in the comments section or by sending me a personal email.

And remember: stay calm and relaxed! Harried, nerve-wracked English teachers make for nervous, agitated English classrooms. We need to see ourselves as Language Arts Zen Masters!


We're going to have a great time together.

Best regards for a great Memorial Day Weekend.

Brady