Lab Reflection #1: Welcome to the First Day of School! :)

I walked into lab this week  not really knowing what to expect. I was nervous about being videotaped and also about teaching in front of my peers because I knew all of us were playing a role and I was not sure how it was going to play out! 

Although I did not really plan on it, I completed my whole lesson in about 10 minutes! Scary!!!!! I know that when I do my lesson for real it will take A LOT longer because not only will I have to repeat things, but my Toilet Paper Game and the iPad Tutorial will go longer because I have around 20 students in the class that I am teaching. 

I also think that I may need to soften myself down a bit, I think that since I was trying to establish the authoritative figure (since it was the first day) I may have come across too strong! This is something that I know I am  going to have to work on! I also need to work on trying to engage students and not just sit there and blab at them which I think will also be difficult for me because I am the kind of person that likes to talk first and answer questions later. 

One part of my experience that I did feel confident about was the transitions I had from topic to topic, I felt that they flowed and allowed me to keep everything on task and keep things moving. I feel that I could have slowed down a little bit with them and gave some time for questions in between topics but again this is something that I will need to polish for my student teaching experiences. 

One of my favorite parts of the lab was getting to play the different roles of students that we generally see in class. I think that this will really help us for when we actually get into the classroom. My sessions seems to still be figuring out just how far we can push it and how crazy we can be, I feel that the more we do this the better we will be at it and will even surprise ourselves at how well we learn the management skills for these students. 

I am looking forward to using the feedback that I am going to get from the other student teachers on my video, the written feedback, and my own feedback to change and grow for next weeks experience! After all practice makes perfect!