Catherine Shea

Professor Suk
Educ 203
April 2018

Catherine Shea
Professor Suk
EDUC 230-01 Education Field Experience
Spring 2018
Rationale Statement

(3) The teacher designs instruction to build on learners’ prior knowledge and experiences,
allowing learners to accelerate as they demonstrate their understandings.
(4) The teacher brings multiple perspectives to the discussion of content, including attention to
learners’ personal, family, and community experiences and cultural norms.

Artifact: Observation Report - Lesson Plan #1

Date of Completion: April 2018

Course Completed in: EDUC-230-02 Education Field Experience

Rationale Statement:
In this lesson plan, I demonstrate how vital it is for the student to be able to identify
similar themes, notice connections between two works of poetry. Also, I showed how the
students are building upon prior knowledge from their analyzing of literature and applying it to
poetry and song lyrics, which is new medium for them. I explained in my lesson plan, “The
students will have had chances to decipher and analyze and comparing works of literature, but
not poetry. Poetry is shorter, more obscure, and often inaccessible to many students due it’s
difficulty to understand, so choosing a song that is accessible helps make the message of the
poem seem more obvious. This will help segway into a more in depth poetry unit while instilling
confidence in the student’s ability to analyze it”. This directly relates to standard three and four
because it shows how I managed to “designs instruction to build on learners’ prior knowledge
and experiences, allowing learners to accelerate as they demonstrate their understandings” (New
Jersey Department of Education, 2014, p.3), as well as, “brings multiple perspectives to the
discussion of content, including attention to learners’ personal, family, and community
experiences and cultural norms” (New Jersey Department of Education, 2014, p.3).
 Through completing the first observation, I can see how vital it is to use different
approaches to learning in the classroom. Through different uses of technology, and through
updating lessons to fit modern times, I can still use true and tested lesson plans but personalize
them to fit with the current class I am instruction. I learned through this observation how
important planning and classroom preparation is. I was lucky enough to be placed with a veteran
teacher who has had decades of experience planning and curating lessons, so the information I
gained during this observation was invaluable to my education.

There is no doubt in my mind that I could use this lesson plan in my future classroom. It
is applicable for multiple works of literature and poetry, and I believe that through selectively
choosing certain song lyrics to relate the poetry too, I could provide a personal interest in the
students in the subject matter that might not have been there before. Moving forward as an
educator, I hope to use my early lesson plans and fine tune them to better suit my student’s needs
and interests.

Reference

New Jersey Department of Education. (2014). ​New Jersey professional standards for teachers
alignment with InTASC​. Retrieved from
http://www.state.nj.us/education/profdev/profstand/ProfStandardsforTeachersAlignmentwithInT
ASC.pdf