Lesson Plan Reflection

Andrea and I used Edgar Allan Poe's poem, "The Raven," to teach the class about different literary devices found in poetry. Since Andrea and I are both huge fans of Poe, our decision to use his most well known poem was an easy one. I always really wanted to use this poem because when my eigth grade English teacher taught this lesson, it was one of my favorite classes I have ever sat through. I also felt that as a teacher, it would be very easy to use this as a starting point for a unit on poetry because branching out to Poe's other poems, and eventually other poets, would be so simple. After a few lessons on poetry, there are certainly some great project ideas I would have my students complete in order to incorprate the different intellegences in my classroom. Overall, I feel that the lesson went well. There was not too much down time for the students to lose focus or get out of hand. Although things went pretty smoothly, there were certainly some issues that could have been resolved. For example, if Andrea and I were to teach this lesson again, I would suggest having a set list of examples at hand when reviewing the definitions of the literary devices. I would also ask the students if they could come up with any examples from popular songs or movies (as long as the choices remain appropriate for a classroom). I really enjoyed teaching this lesson to the class and having Andrea as my partner certainly calmed my nerves. I felt that the two of us worked well together and listened to one another's ideas. I am very excited to being able to plan and teach more lessons in the future!