Wednesday, September 28, 2011

What is a Lesson Extension?

Alright... So, call me a newb, but I didn't exactly know what this meant. Clarifying the meaning of this term saved my lesson for today. I need to give you a little background on what happened with my lesson today.

So, I agreed with my current mentor, Mr. Agajan, a 3rd grade teacher at Chabot Elementary, that I would do a "lesson extension" for short vowel /i/ words. In the students' "OpenCourt" Vocabulary & Comprehension workbook on pg. 12, the assignment was that for each exercises 1 through 10, they needed to pick and write a word with a short vowel /i/ sound followed by two consonants (e.g. brick). For each exercises 11 through 14, they needed to pick a word with a short vowel /i/ sound followed by one consonant (e.g. grip). They would pick from a list of 15 words contained in their workbook on pg. 12. Originally, I was just going to give them a demonstration on how to complete those exercises... There was just one problem with that... They already completed those exercises... -_-...

Luckily, I cleared this up with Mr. Agajan BEFORE I taught my lesson. Now, this is where I clarify the meaning of a lesson extension (or at least, what I understand its meaning to be). The contents of the lesson that I described before is the learning of new material. Namely, it is the learning of words with the short vowel /i/ sound with different numbers of consonants appearing after it. If the class has learned that material, then they should be ready to apply what they learned. How do they apply what they learned? An example of how they can apply what they learned is to independently think of words with a short vowel /i/ sound that are followed either by a single or two consonants. For brevity, unless it is requested, I will not go into the details of how I delivered this lesson (or at least, not in this entry).

There is one thing that I am a little confused by. For the first lesson that I described in this entry, the students needed to apply their understanding of the short vowel /i/ sound in order to select the words, no? So, when they select words with the short vowel /i/ sound, why isn't that considered a "learning extension?" Or, does a lesson being an extension depend on that sense of independence that was present in that second lesson that I mentioned. If you wish, you are welcome to educate me about what I'm missing here.

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