We’re back in the classroom for Round #2 of teaching. I have
had a lot of time to reflect on my previous micro teaching experience and I
walked into my Life Knowledge lesson with a different perspective and attitude.
This time I was ready to take on the classroom management and facilitate this
class to help them become successful with positive relationships. I taught two
8th grade periods, according to Dr. McLean both have been having
problems communicating positively with each other and being kind to each other.
The first period of classes had only 8 students in it, a
small audience which made getting into groups easy, but a difficult crowd to
get to participate. Dr. McLean did have to speak to the students once but as
soon as she did I told the students that they were to pretend that she was not
here, I am the teacher today and not her. This really helped the students
become more aware of their actions, they showed me the same respect that they
show Dr. McLean. I found that I had to really ask students to elaborate on
their answers and keep asking questions to get them to give me answers. I am
not sure if this was because the class was so small or because they were not
used to me teaching, as the class continued on they began to loosen up more,
which was good. I made sure that I kept track of time as I was teaching, I used
a stop watch app to help me keep track of how long I gave them to do
activities. I also planned an extra flex activity just in case I finished
early…finishing early did not happen this time, this time I almost ran out of
time because it took us longer to do some of the activities. All the students
did well on the assessment and learned a lot about being positive to one
another, towards the end of the class I noticed that they started to respect
each other a little better.
Once the first class left I had about 3 minutes to reflect
on what just happened. I quickly discussed with Dr. McLean that for the sake of
time I was getting rid of the Picasso E-Moment because it took time away from
the assessment activity. I also decided that it was not really necessary
because we were doing the Bob the Weatherman E-Moment and the student in the
previous seemed to enjoy that activity better than the Picasso Moment. Now that
I made some changes I quickly decided to change the approach of some of my
questioning/phrasing of questioning. With that the students began coming into
the class and I was ready to roll again.
When this class came into the room their demeanor was
different than the first class, they seemed to be more relaxed and easy going
but they were “meaner” to each other with joking and poking fun at one another.
This time I established that I was the teacher today right off the bat and the
students did not even seem to realize Dr. McLean was sitting in the corner, I
made sure I dealt with any issues that arose, especially the student that tried
to fall asleep in class. This class was more open to giving me answers and elaborating
on those answers. The second class was more creative with their Weatherman
E-Moment weather reports but both classes did fantastic with it. **Side Note:
next time I do the Weatherman E-Moment I think it would probably be beneficial
for a weatherman video clip example would be helpful or give students a script
to demonstrate what is to be done. I gave a demonstration but there was still
some questions about it, I think these ideas might help with the questions.**
As we progressed with the lesson and got towards the end of the period I
distributed the assessment and the students filled it out. We then went over
the answers in class, next time I go over quiz/test answers in a class I am
going to read each question and the answers and not just the answers,
unfortunately for sake of time I had to only read the answers.
One of my favorite parts of the lesson was learning what
each student viewed as an example of a positive relationship on their lives.
There were some really great examples and stories and I could not help but
smile as both classes were eager to share their experiences. It was really neat
to see how the students were a little nicer to each other at the end of the day
too. When I went back the next day, all the students were actually kinder to
one another. I thought it was really awesome to see how one small lesson could
make a big difference; that was so inspiring to me.
I know that there are still somethings that I need to work
on, but that is why we have these experiences, to progress and learn. I can see
the change in myself from the past two experiences and I am really excited to
see that changes from the beginning to the end of student teaching.
No comments:
Post a Comment