First Week in Front

This week was my first time teaching in front of a full classroom! Most of the time in my education classes we teach with a small group, but this class is different. We were required to teach all three types of lessons over the course of two days. It was very nerve wrecking, but after seeing the first group of colleagues teach about Native Americans, I was a lot more confident. 

Our topic was 'Early Travelers'. We got lucky because on the day we were supposed to teach our direct instruction lesson plan it snowed and the school was closed. We had an extra two days to get our plans worked out and ready, for me the nerves just got worse. In my group there are six of us and we taught the direct instruction using google slides with a goanimate video. Standing in front of the class teaching wasn't as bad as I had thought. The class loved our video with Christopher Columbus and we could tell they learned the material. We had two different guided practice activities to make sure the students fully understood what we were teaching. I have to admit, I referred to the students as "guys" once. I know I said in my previous post that it was something to never be said, but i couldn't help it, I slipped. All in all, day 1 of teaching was a success!

The following Tuesday we were scheduled to teach our inquiry and cooperative learning lessons, but yet again the weather prohibited us from doing so. This time I don't think it was luck, it was more of a punishment. My group and I were so ready to teach that we were upset when we found out school was closing early and we wouldn't have the chance to teach. So, we kept on practicing and revising and when Thursday came we were beyond prepared. for our inquiry lesson the students went on an exploration using iPads and a webquest made by one of my colleagues. We introduced the problem by telling the students that the Museum of Natural History had mixed up some of their exhibits and needed their help to figure out what information goes with what explorer. The students were asked to explore the webquest and the different information provided to find out which historical figure they had been given. At the end of the lesson when the students had came to a conclusion, they scanned a barcode to reveal their explorer. The students really enjoyed this activity. They used information as evidence to draw conclusions. It was a great experience for myself to witness the inquiry process first hand.

Next was the cooperative learning lesson. Students were given different roles for this activity of creating a poster to show the class which explorer they had discovered. The student's did an awesome job working with each other to create one poster with all of the required information. Because of time, students had to give a very brief presentation and we were not able to have groups give feedback to each other like we had wanted. 

Of course my group performance was not perfect, but I think we did an excellent job of teaching for the first time. I am so excited to do it again and become the best teacher I can be!