Pre-Student Teaching (EDUC 362: Teaching Experience I) serves as the initial field experience for prospective student teachers and is completed the semester prior to student teaching.
I taught my first solo day on Friday! I was lucky to have my host teacher observe all five sections of the class so that he could guide my analysis of why certain aspects of the lesson worked better for some classes than others (class size, personality of the class, number of SPED students, etc.). Overall, the lessons went really well. I did run a little bit short on time for four out of five sections, but we managed to squeeze everything in. The lesson covered the history of anti-Japanese (as well as general anti-Asian) discrimination in the U.S. as preparation for our discussion of the Japanese American internment camps in the U.S. during WWII. Next week I'll be really flying solo, as my host teacher will be out of town all five days!
My visits to Animas are going great. I love the fourth grade! Mr Ericksen is so wonderful. He continues to give me all the freedom I want to work with his kiddos. Lately we have been working on math in the afternoons. He is trying fervently to prep them for the math portion of the state tests. The students are very hard workers and strive to do their best even when practicing. However after a long day of testing the students poor little brain are pretty fried and therefore they sometimes struggle with some material that should be simple review. After some light guidance though they are back on track and for the most part doing really awesome. I am sure they will do just fine on the state test. Just one more week, then they can breath easy again
I tried to post yesterday but my computer wouldn't work, let's hope it will now!
I'm having a blast in my kindergarten room. The students are so affectionate and so willing to let me help and work with them. It's very ego boosting to walk into this room and have so many people genuinely excited to see you.
This week Mrs. Benally and started talking about what subject I'll be teaching during my ten day and what unit I should use during that time. We agreed that language arts (writing especially) would be a great subject for me to work with the kiddo's on and this week I will be working on finding my resources and writing up my lessons. I'm so excited!
Extra note: rainy days with no recess equals some very annoyed kindergartners! LOL
I have had a great time so far in 1st grade. I never thought I would say that! I ran into one of the kiddos at Wal-Mart one evening, and she was so excited to see me outside the classroom, it was very cute.
Thursday, I was in the classroom for math. They are learning about money. There is a student in this classroom who has a great deal of difficulty staying on task, but he is sharp as a tack. If he hears something once, he knows it. I had the opportunity to work one on one with him. He is a really sweet kid, but disliked by many of the kids in class because of his behavior issues. He worked so hard for me and showed so much potential.
I am looking forward to my solo teaching, which I should be able to start in just a couple of weeks. I am, however, frustrated to a degree. The school district I am working in has strict guidlines about what they are to teach in class. It has become so that all the teachers for each grade level teach the same lessons. They do their planning together and lessons are lined out for a month at a time. All the first grade classes are doing the same lessons at the same time. I am going to be bound by that for this pre-student teaching session. I am hoping that I will have a little more freedom when I actually student teach.
I missed the week of April 4th because of testing in the morning, which brought chaos to the remainder of each day. However, the week of April 11th allowed me to make up the time I had missed. I was able to work with the academic lab class a lot and get to know each individual student better. After observing a lesson of Ervin’s on Monday I felt like I had a handle on the subject matter, 2 dimensional geometry.
My lesson started with the same thing all of Ervin’s classes start with: That Quiz, a website that asks students quick math questions on many different subjects. During my observations I found that this bell ringer activity helped students start each period with some focused, independent work with the subject matter. This was my favorite part of the lesson because I was able to walk around and talk to students individually about what they did and did not understand about the subject matter. The rest of my lesson achieved less than I had hoped for. I attempted to review some of the terms Ervin had introduced in the previous lesson and questions I asked were answered with silence. It was as if no one in the class had ever heard of this circle thing, but I knew they had, I had been there when they did! It didn’t take long for me to realize that I wasn’t evoking any epiphanies with my lesson plan, and on top of that my classroom management was nowhere, but with Ervin’s help the lesson trudged on. The activity of the day involved students picking circular objects, measuring radius, and using formulas to discover other important facts about circles. In the end, students got to practice several math skills and I had a great opportunity to learn something about my lesson planning skills and the consequences of poor management. I also had a chance to reflect on the special needs of these academic lab students, many of whom may simply be math-phobic, math-annoyed, and/or math-defeated. I have had to remind myself that I once felt this way about math for a lot of years.
I taught my first solo day on Friday! I was lucky to have my host teacher observe all five sections of the class so that he could guide my analysis of why certain aspects of the lesson worked better for some classes than others (class size, personality of the class, number of SPED students, etc.). Overall, the lessons went really well. I did run a little bit short on time for four out of five sections, but we managed to squeeze everything in. The lesson covered the history of anti-Japanese (as well as general anti-Asian) discrimination in the U.S. as preparation for our discussion of the Japanese American internment camps in the U.S. during WWII. Next week I'll be really flying solo, as my host teacher will be out of town all five days!
ReplyDeleteMy visits to Animas are going great. I love the fourth grade! Mr Ericksen is so wonderful. He continues to give me all the freedom I want to work with his kiddos. Lately we have been working on math in the afternoons. He is trying fervently to prep them for the math portion of the state tests. The students are very hard workers and strive to do their best even when practicing.
ReplyDeleteHowever after a long day of testing the students poor little brain are pretty fried and therefore they sometimes struggle with some material that should be simple review. After some light guidance though they are back on track and for the most part doing really awesome. I am sure they will do just fine on the state test. Just one more week, then they can breath easy again
I tried to post yesterday but my computer wouldn't work, let's hope it will now!
ReplyDeleteI'm having a blast in my kindergarten room. The students are so affectionate and so willing to let me help and work with them. It's very ego boosting to walk into this room and have so many people genuinely excited to see you.
This week Mrs. Benally and started talking about what subject I'll be teaching during my ten day and what unit I should use during that time. We agreed that language arts (writing especially) would be a great subject for me to work with the kiddo's on and this week I will be working on finding my resources and writing up my lessons. I'm so excited!
Extra note: rainy days with no recess equals some very annoyed kindergartners! LOL
I have had a great time so far in 1st grade. I never thought I would say that! I ran into one of the kiddos at Wal-Mart one evening, and she was so excited to see me outside the classroom, it was very cute.
ReplyDeleteThursday, I was in the classroom for math. They are learning about money. There is a student in this classroom who has a great deal of difficulty staying on task, but he is sharp as a tack. If he hears something once, he knows it. I had the opportunity to work one on one with him. He is a really sweet kid, but disliked by many of the kids in class because of his behavior issues. He worked so hard for me and showed so much potential.
I am looking forward to my solo teaching, which I should be able to start in just a couple of weeks. I am, however, frustrated to a degree. The school district I am working in has strict guidlines about what they are to teach in class. It has become so that all the teachers for each grade level teach the same lessons. They do their planning together and lessons are lined out for a month at a time. All the first grade classes are doing the same lessons at the same time. I am going to be bound by that for this pre-student teaching session. I am hoping that I will have a little more freedom when I actually student teach.
I missed the week of April 4th because of testing in the morning, which brought chaos to the remainder of each day. However, the week of April 11th allowed me to make up the time I had missed. I was able to work with the academic lab class a lot and get to know each individual student better. After observing a lesson of Ervin’s on Monday I felt like I had a handle on the subject matter, 2 dimensional geometry.
ReplyDeleteMy lesson started with the same thing all of Ervin’s classes start with: That Quiz, a website that asks students quick math questions on many different subjects. During my observations I found that this bell ringer activity helped students start each period with some focused, independent work with the subject matter. This was my favorite part of the lesson because I was able to walk around and talk to students individually about what they did and did not understand about the subject matter. The rest of my lesson achieved less than I had hoped for. I attempted to review some of the terms Ervin had introduced in the previous lesson and questions I asked were answered with silence. It was as if no one in the class had ever heard of this circle thing, but I knew they had, I had been there when they did! It didn’t take long for me to realize that I wasn’t evoking any epiphanies with my lesson plan, and on top of that my classroom management was nowhere, but with Ervin’s help the lesson trudged on. The activity of the day involved students picking circular objects, measuring radius, and using formulas to discover other important facts about circles. In the end, students got to practice several math skills and I had a great opportunity to learn something about my lesson planning skills and the consequences of poor management. I also had a chance to reflect on the special needs of these academic lab students, many of whom may simply be math-phobic, math-annoyed, and/or math-defeated. I have had to remind myself that I once felt this way about math for a lot of years.