Rationale:  As a teacher, you are expected to prepare lessons for your students, and this assignment will give you practice for that.  Analyzing the lesson in terms of theories we’ve been studying will help you demonstrate your familiarity with those theories.  Reflection is an essential part of becoming an active teacher-researcher, and again this assignments gives you practice to that end.  While this activity is not as authentic as I would like it to be, it comes as close to authentic as I can possibly make it.

The teaching demonstration assignment:  You will need to plan for a typical class period for a lesson you might do in an ELA classroom.  You’ll lead the rest of the class through the lesson, or as much of it as you’d like to, just as you would in a regular classroom, and we will talk through the rest of it in class.  You’ll also get some feedback from me and your “students” from the teaching demo.

Steps for successful completion:

• Long before you do your teaching demo, you’ll turn in a lesson plan proposal, which will be your preliminary plans telling me what lesson you’re interested in teaching, how you think you’ll go about it, and as much of the lesson plan as you can fill in.  I’ll read it and comment on it and return it to you for revision before you give your demo.
• The week before your teaching demo, you’ll turn in a completed lesson plan, based on the lesson plan template.  This document will show me how thoughtfully you’ve planned your presentation.
• After you do your lesson, you’ll add to your lesson plan by reflecting on it in the final section.  I will see a completed version before the final draft of your lesson plan goes into your portfolio.