renee's blog

Today was the first day of school! I am teaching a high school media studies class this year. In it, we will produce the school news program in addition to daily digital displays featuring school announcements. The class went ok. The students seem excited about the potential to create a news program, especially as I have left it open for them to create their own content. I did make the mistake, however, of allowing too much time for class conversation without a developing enough discussion points. My mistake was in my assumption that students would contribute more then they actually did. My solution will be to create a more structured lesson for next time.

Today I experienced teaching a lesson on a lesson plan to a room full of teachers. Let me explain - My school is adapting a program based on personality types. Students will be given Myers-Briggs personality tests and grouped together based on their results. Those groups - whom we are calling culture groups - will meet every two weeks during a block schedule. Part of the agenda during those meetings is a reading seminar. Our goal is to encourage our students to read for pleasure more often, and we're hoping that by discussing reading with peers that share the same inclinations toward reading they'll discover better reading habits and/or new book genres that appeal to their tastes. So, my lesson today was to introduce the idea to the teachers and to share a lesson plan I developed for the culture group reading seminar. This particular lesson delves into whether or not we read for pleasure, why or why not, and what the class may collectively have in common pertaining to read...