Reflection on Classroom Standards

Reflection on Standards

                Let me say that this module looks like it is going to be the most intensive one yet, and I think that is because we are halfway through our course, and it is high time we got into the meat and potatoes behind planning lessons. I am not going to lie…I have done very little lesson planning in the past. I basically knew what I needed to get done in two week intervals, given homework and assessments, and then moved onto the next part that needed to be accomplished, and as a result of this teaching, I am steadily remiss in all the areas involving actual hard core lesson planning. Because my experience has been limited, this whole unit was difficult for me to wrap my head around.

                I think the hardest part for me to understand with the standards was the whole idea of unpacking via stages of difficulty. This was especially tricky for me because, according to California, each standard also has specific stages of advancement based on learned material. I do not know if this is the case elsewhere, but this is an aspect that seems like it can be consistently changing. For example, if my Spanish II class is better than my Spanish III class, then it would seem that perhaps standards were not taught in summation the year before by the previous teacher or, perhaps, stages were ignored. It made me wonder if some teachers have difficulty with the stages and their levels of rigidity. Are these stages and their standards set in stone, or can they alter depending on the class and its level of intelligence? Just something I was thinking on for a bit.

                By the same token, the easiest part about all of this was the unpacking because ideally a teacher knows what he or she wants the students to have mastered by the end of a unit. In unpacking, the teacher illustrates to himself or herself what needs to be done in order to reach a final point in the lesson. Unpacking also allows the student to know what needs to be learned and completed before he or she can move on and advance to the next lesson. Everything in constantly building upon itself and it is imperative to keep that in mind. It makes creating lesson objectives clear for the student and the teacher. I found this especially true in the California state standard stages for foreign language because stage two can only flourish because of a good stage one and stage three can only exist because of successful evaluations of the first two stages.

                All in all this was the start of a unit that really got me because it was an aspect of teaching that I was aware existed, but I had never done. Now that I have actually lesson planned, I see why this is so time consuming. I do think though that it is easier to lesson plan for middle or high school when a teacher is only doing one or two different classes, but I have a whole other level of respect for the elementary grades because they must be planning all day long!