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Jonathan Kirk

EDUC 407

March 12, 2021

Week Eight Reflection

With yet another week of student teaching in the books, I continue to grow and enhance

my teaching skills every week. My mentor and I work diligently after school every day to plan,

adjust, and modify lessons so that they are suitable to the needs of our students. “Tweaking,” as

Mrs. Warner calls it, is one of the most important characteristics that an effective teacher must

possess. Whether it be adjusting lessons because they did not go as planned or simply adding,

subtracting, or moving activities to another day, “tweaking” planning in this sense just shows

that the teacher is responsive and aware of his/her students needs. These ideas, as mentioned in a

previous week, go along with the idea of being flexible. Flexibility, as we all know, is the

number one, key trait all teachers must possess. This week was another great example of

flexibility! Plans may be in place, but that does not mean that they will be taught or even

introduced during that week! Although teaching may become very stressful when students are

not “on the same page” or the lesson content is not being taught in the right order, tweaking the

lesson, again, becomes very important as the students' learning needs must be met before more

content is introduced. Nevertheless, tweaking a lesson or plan means more than just adapting it

to student needs.

When creating a lesson or searching for practice activities, Mrs. Warner and I like to turn

to Teachers Pay Teachers for our resources. This week I was discouraged as I began to search

for an article to read for a short St. Patrick’s Day lesson. All of the articles I found were either

too controversial or too young for seventh graders to be reading. However, after seeing my
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frustration, Mrs. Warner used her favorite word “tweak” in a way that helped me to better

understand how to go about using TPT resources. When purchasing a resource, every teacher

must be wary of the content they are purchasing. Improper spelling, grammatical errors, and

inaccurate information can all be red flags when using these resources (and they reduce the true

educational nature of the resource!). Thus, Mrs. Warner taught me the art of tweaking.

Purchasing resources off of teacher-made websites is a wonderful way to get ideas and activities

for a lesson, but it should always be adapted in a way that is suitable tok the specific students we

are teaching. For example, when working on a comprehension quiz to go along with the article

we are reading in class, several of the questions on a teacher-made (PDF/uneditable) were

perfect for what I was trying to assess. Yet, while those questions were applicable to the lesson,

the remaining questions, such as those focusing on text structure (which we have not yet

covered), did not fit with the lesson objectives. Mrs. Warner had taught me, as a result, to tweak

the test to my specifications. While this seems very basic, I am used to just “borrowing” or using

a resource without adapting it or putting my own spin on it. This is a very important lesson to

learn, especially going forward, as I now recognize the importance of making my materials

unique to my class.