#3 - Teaching, Reflecting & Reteaching

Consider a lesson you have taught the first week of November, with an eye toward reteaching or extending your lesson for particular groups of students.

The prompt has four parts:

(1) Learning target: list the short term learning target/objective of the lesson, along with a short description of the learning experiences section of your lesson plan.

Students will experience traditions and customs in China with a read aloud and discussion questions. The students will give examples of customs and traditions from the book.

This is a read aloud called The Dragon Prince. The students will hear multiple customs in the story from China including: Bride Price, Visiting families, and Bowing. The discussion questions to go along with these customs are:

Custom pg 3: Bride price – A bride price is a gift given from the groom to the bride or her family. In some cultures, there is a dowry instead. A dowry is a gift from the bride’s family to the husband. In China and in this book, we see a bride price. The dragon is offering the father’s life as a gift to marry his daughter. Usually the gift is money or property.

Custom pg 15: “it is the custom … brides may visit their families after they marry.” Here we see that in China it is custom that the bride visits her family after she is married.

Custom pg 17: Why do you think Seven bowed to her father? He’s not a king, just a farmer. Could this be a custom? It is a custom. In our culture we shake hands or hug to show friendship. In China it is a custom for the daughter to bow to her father as a show of respect.

We ended with a discussion of what customs and traditions are.

(2) Evidence: describe what students did or said to let you know whether you were successful in meeting this goal (what evidence led you to this conclusion?)

The students were engaged in the discussion during the story and at the end after the story. They gave examples they had heard from the story remembering the "visiting family" and "bowing like shaking hands". The students were able to connect with the story throughout with the prompts. I asked how many students would hug their family if they hadn't seen them in a long time such as a week - and most of them enthusiastically raised their hands. The students were also able to give many self created definitions of a tradition. "something you do with your family" and "something you do every year" are some responses I heard.

(3) Reteach: describe how you could/will reteach the lesson for students who may need extra support beyond what you offered in the lesson.

When I reteach this lesson in the future I will cut out some of the long descriptions. The students attention wandered during the story. It is quite long for 1st graders. I will also stop half way through the story to have a short discussion or activity - possibly having them move to a different spot. This will help the students stay focused for the whole story.

(4) Extend: describe how you could/will extend the lesson for students who successfully met your expectations (i.e., how will you help students build on what they've already mastered?).

I will be having the students discuss their own traditions with their families. The students will draw a picture and their family will write the tradition for the student to share with the class.


As with our last prompt, visit a colleague's blog a few days after the prompts are due -- offer some friendly feedback about their ideas for reteaching and extending their lesson.