Jace Flores Student Teacher Blog

Something I became aware of as time passed on was that certain activities started to get stale. If I did the same activity four to five days in a row, chances are not only would the students get bored with the unit, but so would I. Even interesting things can get boring if it is the same format over and over, so something I started actively thinking about when crafting unit plans was how to do things differently when possible. Group work going through an activity was the average activity, but I tried to keep that to two to three days a week. The other days had to be different in some way, and common ideas I did was class readings (so we would read through a reading as a class and unpack it as one), watching a YouTube video, taking notes and discussing it, doing some sort of writing activity whether it be creative writing or researching something, and more fun activities like simulations and other more one off things. This helped to keep things more fresh so the students would be more active and engaged with the material (as well as present different approaches to the material for students who had different preferences on how to be taught). It also kept things fresh for me so I was more engaged and focused in helping the students and teaching the content. So by keeping things fresh it was a win-win not only for my students, but myself as well.