Reflection

My first blog was about my analogous view on teaching. I related teaching to a relay race in terms of passing the baton. After reading the response to that blog, and in reflecting back on my experience, I realized that the pace is just as important. I think that getting caught up in the whirlwind of teaching can be a real turn-off to the field and can make a teacher lose sight of that baton. I found time management to be an issue in that I was rushing a lot and not meeting my goals, and to in that rushing I was just so focused on getting it done as opposed to teaching the material. I think that keeping that baton in your hand to remind you of your purpose, can help with that pacing.

488 Teaching 5

Field Teaching 5

My partner and I decided to go over the material before we administered the test today. For the test, we came up with a pretty comprehensive rubric for the oral part and, what we think, is a very easy to follow written test. We wanted to give the students both the options of an oral and written test because over the course of these lessons we noticed that some of the students are at a disadvantage because they are at a lower level with their literacy, but they know the material. WE spent some time going over the handout again, one student didn’t even have his handout in front of him when we were doing so with the whole class on the rug. The test was going smoothly until the fire alarm sounded and we were pushed back a good 20minutes. We panicked for a little bit because this was the last day before their spring break, so we wouldn’t be able to come in again and administer it. We managed to finish the last student a minute after the last bell sounded for them to be released. The students in general were not in the mood to take a test because it was the last day before break, and they were really excited, but they were very responsible as they were taking their tests, I was actually surprised. They also like the final assignment that they could do if they finished early, which was to design their dream playground that had 2 simple machines in it.

488 Teaching 4

Field Teaching 4

Today was going to be our last day of teaching new material. We decided to use this lesson to explain compound machines and to go over the worksheet. Surprisingly, my partner spent a really long time attending to each student about the handout, and it was a bit discouraging for me to see that some of the students were not understanding as opposed to the students who knew the material, but just had problems with writing. This is an interesting class because they are all at such wide ranges of academic levels. The compound machine activity was fun for them, but they were coming up with some outlandish stuff like the new game boy etc. My partner and I noticed that they were still thinking of machines in terms of electronics, so we went ahead and cleared that up. Tomorrow is exam day! Ahhhhh

488 Teaching 3

Field Teaching 3

Our plan today was to finish teaching the last two machine groups from last class and then to do the same thing with the next three machines. We figured that the remaining 3 machines are not difficult to explain and understand so they shouldn’t take too much time. Just to be on the safe side, we decided not to do stations for the last two machines. The class was a bit rowdy today and they really wanted to talk and move around. One boy kept on showing me his home-made simple machines book from under his desk while I was teaching the class. I guess we should always have the class seated on the rug when doing whole class instruction maybe? Somehow, we still found ourselves rushing a bit because the students were not understanding what to fill in on the handouts as much as we thought they would. We are going to have to devote more time to explain the answers for their worksheets.

488 Teaching 2

Field Teaching 2

Today was the day that we really started to teach the content of Simple Machines. We decided to divide teaching each simple machine into two groups over two days, so we did 3 machines per day. Today we taught the lever, pulley and wheel and axel. My partner explained the lever first in a whole class, and I helped with the demonstration. We then divided the class into two, one for each station and the plan was to have them rotate. The demonstration took a bit longer than expected, but it was a blast to show the students how a lever works as a see saw. Our science professor was right when he said that teaching science to children is like showing them magic, because they sure were impressed. I felt like I was rushing at my station when demonstrating the pulley and having them make their own flag poles, we went over time and decided to just have them rotate at the beginning of our next lesson. Time management is definitely going to be an issue for us.

488 Teaching 1

Field Teaching 1

Today was our first day of teaching this class. I was really nervous and was trying to study my scripted lesson plan as much a possible. My partner and I decided to both teach this lesson on work. It seems that as soon as the students came back from their word study groups we just had to dive right in to teaching. We asked our class supervisor to observe us this day, and we think this was a good idea being the first lesson so that we know exactly what we need to work on for the remaining lessons. When it was my turn to explain an activity to the class, I was not explicit enough and this showed as the class clusters were all doing different things. Our field supervisor noticed it also. We had to improvise at the end because we finished early and did not plan for that. It worked out well, however, as I just had each student draw a picture demonstrating an object with kinetic energy, and the other with potential. The students were great.

488 Observation 3

Field Observation 3 March 1^st, 2007

My partner and I observed their morning meeting again. This time, students had to write (the teacher explicitly said no drawing or coloring until later) for their projects, that they were to share in 2 minutes. I noticed that the students were seated very quietly and were very well-disciplined. As we walked and looked around the room, I noticed that this third grade class was very busy in terms of objects, papers, worksheets, posters, boards, everything, but, their work spaces were very neat and tidy. The teacher explained how she measures the students’ fluency. She collects measures their fluency twice a week but she says that it is also ok to do every day but their just is not enough time. Students are given 1 minute to read a passage and then their graph their wpm on a chart. We gave our teacher the pre-assessment for her class on Simple Machines.