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Lauren Smith
Instructor Craig Findley
ED 2500
Weekly Reflection
April 3, 2015
Furthering my Understanding
This week has been an event packed and full of experience that I think have enabled me
to look further into my career as a teacher. During my practicum this week, my T.A has been
thinking of ideas and lessons that will allow her students to become more invested and
passionate about their school work. In that, my T.A organized a lesson plan based on a short
story/picture book called Creepy Carrots. Being such a unique and fun book for the class to
read, they became incredibly excited to participate in any lesson that reflected contents of the
book. An assignment that the class did together was create a movie trailer of the book, using
puppets and backgrounds that they constructed from their comprehension of the book. Seeing the
students, as well as my T.A, become so immersed and excited about a lesson and its content was
a very enlightening and inspiring moment for me. Not only am I excited to maybe conduct a
lesson like this in my teaching career, but I am incredibly proud of the students within the
classroom.
This week further enabled me to reflect on my passion and progress as a teacher, as I had
to conduct a micro-teach lesson for my fellow ED2500 classmates. While planning my lesson, I
really wanted to focus on my major in English, while incorporating creative elements. I decided
to teach a lesson on the Viking (Old Norse) alphabet. My lesson consisted of showing my
students the symbols of the Viking alphabet and its translation into English. The goal of my
lesson was to teach students the symbols in order for them to write in Viking and translate Viking
into English. During my presentation, I feel like I created an enthusiastic and creative
atmosphere as I established a creative setting for my students and executed a variety of activities.
I was very nervous that I had planned too much for my lesson, but in the end, I had more time
than I predicted, so I had to improvise and plan another activity; I think I did a good job
improvising. Even though I feel like I conducted a fun and educating lesson for my students, I
know I need to work on my instruction; I tend to mix up my words. As I am so passionate in

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teaching, and in that, really want to become an effective teacher, I need to work on my
instructive communication. I feel like I know the information I am teaching my class, but I need
to remember to take my time, breathe, and execute my direction in a smooth manner.
Overall, this week allowed me to observe and experience new components of teaching.
From participating and closely observing my T.As creative lesson plan, to creating and
implementing my own lesson plan, I am furthering my understanding of the teaching profession
and becoming more and more excited about becoming a teacher.