EDG4376 Reflection #19

A little less than a year ago, I thought learning how to use the Miami Dade College School of Education lesson plan format was particularly difficult. Today, I fly through lesson plans with ease. However, the constructivist lesson plan format was brand new to me this semester, and at first, it seemed completely out of my league. I had absolutely no idea what a bridging activity was, what the details section was supposed to consist of, and even how to go about grouping the students! As a so-called advocate of Constructivism, this was an absolutely terrible realization for me! However, I learned a lot from creating the three Constructivism lesson plans, and now, thankfully, feel pretty comfortable with the format. The content area web matrix portion of the unit plan still confuses me, but I know that, in time and practice, I can master that as well. All in all, I think I enjoy creating Constructivist lesson plans even more than the regular ones. I like the idea that the students are grouped together to research and construct knowledge on their own. To me, this is an imperative aspect of education. Cooperative learning activities build social and communication skills, which are vital skills to have in today’s diverse world. Furthermore, group activities reflect what goes on in the world in real life situations. Not many people go through life without some sort of job, career, or schooling where they don’t have to interact with other people on a regular basis. Additionally, I believe that any lesson is more meaningful to students if they are given the opportunity to construct their own knowledge and opinion of the subject matter. Now, although I do not consider myself an advocate of Behaviorism, I absolutely loved creating the Behaviorist lesson plans! Believe it or not, they made sense to me, and I easily understood the concepts of each portion of the template. I thought it was organized and structured in such a way that it made sense for any and every grade level and/or classroom. I truly enjoyed creating a step-by-step procedure and modeling examples. For some reason, I thought the Behaviorist lesson plan format was, by far, the easiest and most pleasurable of all the lesson plans to formulate and construct. However, all in all, I’m thrilled I was given the chance to practice all three formats this semester.