I think Sarah and I had a good
experience teaching rocks and minerals to one of the 4th grades at
South Row. We did a lot of planning and
I feel that we were very organized in the way we presented the lesson and
carried it out. We stayed connected to the frameworks and tried to deliver the
lesson in a way that students could make connections to the topic. They did seem
to be interested in the lesson and in the examination of the rocks. We did well on time. We accomplished our goal
but we could have spoken more if we needed to.
We
went over many safety rules and asked the class to contribute their own. We
were really concerned about the students putting rocks into their mouths but
luckily that did not happen. When the
students were feeling the rocks for texture I noticed one pair trying to
scratch each other on the arms with the rocks. I told them that it was better
to feel the rocks with their fingers. This seemed to work. We also stressed the
importance of using the hand lenses properly. We mentioned not putting them up
to their eyes because it was unsafe and could do damage to their eyes. They didn’t inappropriately play around with
the hand lenses. We also told the students not to try to scratch the hand
lenses with the rocks.
I was happy to be working with Sarah since I am new to the program and
she has more experience than I do. There are 25 students in the class and I can’t
even imagine teaching this lesson alone. It’s nice to have another person there
to lean on and who can help out. We
broke the lesson up so that we took turns speaking and writing and walking
around the room observing the students. Overall
I think it was a great first experience and I am looking forward to learning
about some more rocks next week.
Wow...scratching each other on the arms. That's one I haven't seen before. Glad that you were on top of it.
ReplyDeleteI agree...team teaching can be wonderful for many reasons, one of which is learning with a capable colleague.
I'm glad that your first experience with teaching was a good one! I agree that working with a partner made the first lesson much less stressful than it would have been if we had to worry about remembering every single thing on our own. It was nice being able to take a minute and think about what I was going to say next while Alyssa was doing her thing, and I think that made our lesson go much more smoothly too. I could rethink everything that I was going to say and make changes depending on what was already said or what questions were already answered.
ReplyDeleteI think it's awesome that you feel like Sarah's level of experience is going to help you get more out of your time spent at South Row than if you were going to teach the lessons yourself, and it sounds like you two are going to do a great job!