3 weeks down, 12 to go...

As the semester begins to turn into a routine I am flooded with work. The scariest part is that next week, in exactly 6 days, I will be teaching in front of a whole class for the first time ever. This makes me nervous, but with all of the long hours in the library collaborating with my group, I should have nothing to worry about right? Well thats what one would think. How can someone who wishes to be a teacher be nervous about teaching in front of the class? I'll tell you why. In my previous education classes I worked with a partner or two in small groups of students. In these small groups you are able to form a relationship with the student(s) you are working with. You feel more comfortable and get to know more about the student(s) to base your lesson plans off their interests. Working with an entire class, only teaching two days is a total opposite situation from what I'm used to. I now have two days, 90mins, to impress 25 second graders and hope my lesson excites, engages and teaches the material. That's a lot to ask. As a class we briefly met with the students for one class period in which we had only 8mins to work with each group of students. I was barley able to remember anyone's name, let alone their interests or personalities. This makes creating a lesson much more difficult. How am I going to teach all different students the same material in just two lessons. There are a few things I need to make sure I do. I must engage the students right from the start, so they are eager to learn. If I fall short on the engagement, everything will begin to go downhill. I also need to remember that students do not want to be talked to for an entire 45mins. These 7 and 8 year olds want to move around or talk to a neighbor. Somehow I need to incorporate this into my lesson without students getting out of control. The first lesson is a direct instruction lesson will be mainly vocal based and in my previous post I stated ways to assess students understanding. This is also key. I need to see their learning outcomes in order to create my inquiry based lesson. There is so much to remember, but the most important is to NEVER refer to the class as "guys"! On that note, hopefully next goes well and the students enjoy my teaching. In the end all of these long hours will all be worth it.