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Liam Kelley

Professor Heidi Frederiksen

EDUC 450

26 February 2017

MTV Lesson Debrief

The strategy I taught was Chalk Talk, which I thought went really well. As a teaching

technique, I think that it has a wide range of possibilities and applications in the classroom. After

breaking up the class into our PLCs, I asked the question: Should discomfort excuse students

from having to complete an assignment? I found this question and thought that it applied well to

our context, but it could easily be adapted into something more specific to English. For example,

I could have asked: Does George make the right decision at the end of Of Mice and Men? and

students would pass their sheets from group to group and respond to each other. But I think that

the question on assignments and grading was much more applicable.

That leads well into one of my surprises for this lesson, as our class seemed to focus

much more of the question I asked rather than the actual strategy. I suppose this is good and bad,

as I would have liked to receive more feedback on the applications of the lesson, but I did like

the discussion that it sparked. I might change the way that I set it up in order to have more

movement. I like passing the papers from group to group, but I think it might have been a bit

more effective had I put up some posters around the room and had everyone move around. This

is how I had seen this activity done in the past and I liked it. I suppose the time limitations

played a part in how I set it up, and that could not really be changed. Besides that, I really

enjoyed the activity and could see how it might work in an English classroom. It allows everyone
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to have a voice and participate without having a large class discussion where quieter students

might be drowned out. Additionally, the sheets of paper provide evidence for me as a formative

assessment that a discussion would not.

In terms of the other strategies, I really liked See-Think-Wonder. It allowed for an easy

way to go in depth with something, be it a picture, a passage, or a video. I think I would use it

with a passage or a poem - maybe a poem with two very distinct meanings. As a class, we could

read the poem and talk about the surface level ideas. This could include literary devices and

other similar things. Then we could move on towards the other layers of the poem, such as the

allegories and symbolism in the Think and Wonder stages. I could posit questions along with the

students to potentially guide them to other ways of reading the poem. As another example, I

might show an image from one of the literary eras we we studying and have them make

assumptions based on the stimuli from the photograph or painting.

Another strategy that I latched onto was the Concept map. This could be very useful for

explaining or reviewing something like Introductions or Conclusions. As a class, we could

brainstorm the parts of the introductory paragraphs - like what components are necessary, what

makes a good thesis statement, a good hook. The strategy provides nice visuals for students to

follow. Afterwards, I could take a photo of the board and put it up online or copy it down into

notes. This, like a Chalk Talk, makes for a good formative assessment to see where students are

at. I could look at which points are lacking depth or explanation and focus on those during the

next class or workshop day.