During Summer Semester 1998 in my Health and P.E. course, I had the opportunity to prepare and teach a health lesson on the topic of self-esteem. The lesson was geared toward first-grade students and focused on ways they could be special to others. I was able to present my lesson for a small group of classmates. This experience has helped me to see the importance of planning when preparing a good lesson. I have included a copy of the lesson plan as evidence.
Effective teaching requires careful planning. There also needs to be a lot of time, energy, and creativity put into planning, in order for teachers to be able to plan learning experiences that encourage students to be successful in their learning. For this to happen, teachers must have a clear focus for what they want the students to learn and how they plan the address key points.
After selecting my lesson, one of my first steps was to research the topic. I spent some time on the computer researching information on the Internet about self-esteem in younger children. I also looked at lesson plans from other teachers to see how they may have taught the same type of lesson. This helped me to see creative ways that I could adapt my lesson and make it more interesting and understandable to my students. After doing my research, I went back and reviewed my lesson again to see where I could make some changes. I chose to adapt my lesson plan by focusing in on the aspect that you are special because you are a gift to others. I felt that by making these changes the learning experience would be more meaningful to my students.
The actual teaching experience allowed me to see the ways careful preparation of a lesson can be helpful. For example, when I explained to students that they could be a gift to others by their actions and gave some examples, they were able to make appropriate responses. Some students responded that they could help others by sharing, while others suggested that they could do things such as clean their rooms to be a gift.
Anytime I am given the chance to develop my skills as a teacher, it is a learning experience. I found this experience to be extremely valuable because it gave me the opportunity not only to plan a lesson, but also to teach it. Teaching helped me to see that being prepared is very important when addressing students. My background research of the topic was able to help me when students needed an alternative way for understanding the concept. For instance, from my research I learned that students understand best when examples are given. My ability to provide examples helped students to better understand the concept of giving to make others happy. As an educator, it is my goal to create lessons that are adapted to reflect the different learning styles of my students.