I'll apologize now for the long post, but it was a awesome day for learning!
I taught my first lesson today over irregular plurals. I used the Promethean board, had a power point, and had a game to play! It seemed to really capture the students attention with all the action. I was also really nervous. It seems that since I had already taught for a few weeks before, this should be a peace of cake. There were a lot of factors that go into it; it was a new group with different abilities, it's a different environment and that brings on a different atmosphere, I now have to direct my instruction for 28 students instead of 19 (and my supervisor was there watching me). I think teaching is really taken for granted. When I was making my lesson plan at home my little cousin in fifth grade was watching me type it up. She was really inquisitive about what I was doing. I told her about how teachers have to plan out what they need to teach. They don't just walk into the room and start talking. She seemed to be impressed by this and then watched me for a bit longer. She asked why I was adding different things into the lesson. This is a perfect example of how much teachers do behind the scenes.
During our team meeting we worked on figuring out how to score the report cards. It was really fascinating listening to the 3 teachers talk about each section and decided on a 1-2-3 proficiency. I guess I didn't realize how much collaboration was put into the report cards. It was helpful for me to ask questions to my CT afterwords to; Who makes up the report card, are they district/school wide, how do you inform the parents about how the report cards work. I had more questions about them, but because there are only short bouts of time between when the students are gone, I didn't get to ask them. It's interesting how many more categories are on the card compared to when I was in school. I remember having it just tell about the main subject, now it has subcategories for the subjects.
Both the CT and I learned a lesson after teaching math lesson about decimals. Since Cedar Rapids uses a spiral method for math they should have already touched on decimals in previous years and should have a bit of an understanding for them. Well, since it was assumed that they should have know this material less whole group was taught and more independent work was done. While I was going around I noticed that quite a few students where mixing up where to put some of the numbers after the decimal and how to incorporate the whole number. Lesson learned was to not assume they know something. It seems to be a double edge sword when teaching. You can't assume they don't know anything when most of them do understand the concept. This will completely bore them and you will lose their attention. But if you assume they know to much then you will also lose them because they don't have the necessary background information to understand. It seems that this happy medium is something you learn over time with experience, as with a lot of concepts for teaching.
After school an awesome thing happened... Students asked for homework even though they were told they had none! This shows me, as a teacher, that they really do want to learn and want to gain that confidences that comes with understanding a concept. About 12 of the students took the worksheet home. Even though they may not complete it (even though I believe that with this group most of them will!), it shows intuition for taking the sheet and thinking about doing it.
Today I sat with the students at lunch. I think this is an awesome opportunity because I get to hear what they are talking about and what interests them. I can also build a stronger relationship with them because I am using my own time and energy to actively find out about them. The relationship/trust component is so important when teaching. Unfortunately I wasn't able to begin at the beginning of the school year with the class so I have some making up to do. While looking around I saw a sign.... It read (school Mascot) kid's kafe. First off I thought that's cute. Then as I looked and thought about the sign more it kind of upset me. The "kafe" should be spelled 'cafe.' Think about how many times students look at that word and don't realize that is a misspelling. Then once they have a spelling test or have to write it they may have it spelled. Then as my CT and I were talking about it he pointed out another obvious flaw that I didn't catch right awat. The Kid's has 's which means one kid owns it. So it's the one kid's kafe, where it should be the kids' kafe meaning all the kids have ownership over it. It was probably just a mistake overlooked before hanging it, and of course we all make mistakes :)
No comments:
Post a Comment