Our First Day

Well, I now have my first taught lesson under my belt! I was so, so nervous to teach a lesson on Monday, but it went pretty smooth and the kids loved it! With that said, I'm going to talk about the three criteria.

First, lesson planning. I can't tell you all (though you probably already know!) how much I was relying on my lesson plan Monday. It was definitely helpful to have a solid plan for how we were going to teach our lesson. It was awesome to finally put a lesson plan into practical use to see how it all works out. What ended up happening was not what I expected. The students did everything quicker than we anticipated. For example, items that we planned to take 10 minutes may have only taken about 5. While writing the lesson plan for next week, Sarah and I made sure to have extending-the-lesson activities on hand! Also, while talking to the teacher, Mrs. K., she gave us some advice that we are definitely going to incorporate into our next lesson plan as well. She suggested only focusing on one key question, we had 3! This was a good idea because it allowed the students to truly understand the topic we were going over. If we included other key questions, yeah we would have gone over them, but the children wouldn't have as deep of an understanding.

Next, safety was something that we focused on during this lesson. Part of this lesson included talking about the senses. We first asked students to list them, and then we talked about the safety involved while using them. We mentioned how students should waft when using their sense of smell. We also told them that they should never use their sense of taste in a science lesson unless their teacher says its ok. We furthered the safety talk by reminding childen about general classroom safety tips such as no running, pushing, etc. I feel as though these reminders were very useful to go over because the classroom proved to be a very controlled environment for the duration of the lesson. I think its important to give such reminders before any lesson.

Finally, teamwork was another focus of ours this week. I can't tell you how glad I was to have Sarah there with me for my first lesson! We worked back and forth in a great way that definitely made me more comfortable in this new role as a teacher. There was one specific moment during our lesson that Sarah came to my rescue, of course the kids could't tell! We had gone over who would say what and I was going to discuss the senses and then talk about safety. Well, I went over the senses and then my mind went blank! I knew I wasn't done with my schpeal so I looked at Sarah and she started talking right where I left off! Our teamwork was great on Monday and it really paid off being well prepared.

The kids reacted so positively to our lesson that I'm excited to go back next Monday. I hope they're ready to learn about Life Cycles! :-)