My mentor, My unit and I

1. As I plan and teach my unit, which aspects of it follow the guidelines and style of my mentor and which are my own ideas and choices?
the structure of the class and how much time is given to Chavrutah learning. I changed how the students are assessed and how points are assigned and how and when they are provided with their work. I also am asking more of the students in terms of providing their own ideas and letting the class direction move forward based on their ideas. I am also focusing less in both instruction and assessment on grammar and vocabulary than my teacher, which may not make her happy.
2. How did I arrive at this decision?
I wanted to make sure they students were focusing their energies on ideas that would lead to the EU and did not want to get bogged down by grades and vocab.

3. How has my mentor responded?
We shall see. So far very supportive.

4. What have I learned about myself and learning to teach?
I need a lot more work on classroom management. I have to be very clear about instructors with students, because they are unfamiliar with my methods and forms of assessment. I also realize how much I love teaching this material. My combination of content knowledge and passion for sharing it allows me the energy to not only find interesting ways to structure my unit and lessons, but also the will to deliver it in the face of sometimes resistant students.

Assessments in Tanach

What kinds of assessments have you seen in your classroom? What was their purpose? What might you learn from them?(think of the three concentric circles of EU; something worth knowing; something worth being familiar with) -tests, worksheets, essays, discussions, interpretive art, write your own stories, write a response. Most of it is stuff work knowing. Only a small part requires the students to enter the enduring understanding realm, like essays that ask them to reflect on larger issues of the text. Some projects could access the EU if the students weren't prompted so much and provided with most of the information. There was a project, called interpretive midrash that asked the students to interpret some aspect of what it meant to be a prophet based on one of the texts we discussed in the class and then to reflect and share their artistic choices.