Presentation Reflection

How sweet it is to have 25 attentive and engaging 3rd graders when presenting a lesson! Their active participation and willingness to sing along in a language they do not know clearly showed they were interested, fascinated, and receptive to learning. This teaching experience was a very positive one for me. It was the silver lining to the stress of lesson planning. I knew the students’ interest was stimulated when they started to sing along with me rather then repeating after me. What a sweet moment!

Some things I did that helped make this lesson a success: checked for student’s existing knowledge first by having them tell me what they know about tune or melody and lyrics; focused the lesson using only one song, modeled by reading the lyrics (in Chinese-PinYin) of song. Encouraged whole class participation through choral reading of the lyrics, and provided positive feedbacks and encouragements not only to the class but also to individual students.

If I could do the lesson again, I would have a more clearly defined summarization to the lesson. Perhaps if the lesson was used as the “hook” lesson for a unit focused on understanding different aspects of diverse cultures, closure and summation could be better expressed.

I will never think of Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star just as another children’s song. It now has a deeper meaning for me. Whenever I hear this song from now on, the memory of those happy smiling 3rd graders’ faces will remind me why I want to teach.