Unit Day Two

Today's lesson was 100 times better than yesterday's! First of all, I no longer had these crazy, ridiculous nightmares about how I would fail my students and be completely unprepared. Second, because my first day was over, I felt more confident to teach today. Third, my students actually related to the hero's journey theme and understood what they were reading! It was seriously the best feeling ever and I am so completely content right now! At least I'm not a totally failure as an English teacher...

I'm really glad I decided to completely change my lesson I had planned for today. The students responded really well to the mini-lesson over the hero's and "Grendel's" in their own lives. It was interesting to listen to my students' problems they must battle with in their lives. I feel as though through this assignment, I was better able to understand and relate to my students as well. In addition, when I asked why I had them perform that assignment, they all were able to relate the hero's to Beowulf, and their problem's to Grendel. It was beautiful! Finally, I had my students relating their lives to Beowulf! After this activity, we read aloud and stopped every so often to discuss concepts from the text. In doing this, my students responded very well and seemed to understand what they were reading. Once again, I asked my students how they wanted to read the text the next day and they stated aloud. My students said the text was easier to understand when we read it aloud as a class. Though I had not originally planned to read the text aloud on my third day of teaching, I definitely will change my lesson plan for tomorrow in order to accomodate my students' needs. I'm excited to see how my plan for tomorrow will turn out! I'm really glad today went so smoothly because I felt extremely discouraged my first day of teaching.