Teaching Comes to a Close!

3 Days of Teaching All Summed Up!

Now that my group has finished in teaching in the classroom, I feel that I should reflect on my experience as a whole. I had a create time working with the students in second grade. The students were great and we all had a good time. This was a great learning experience for me. This was the first time that I had the opportunity to teach and work with a full class. This is very different from just working one on one with a student or with a small group of students, these are situations that I have had the chance to work in. Being in charge of a full class even with four other people in my group was a bit of a challenge. We had to work long and hard on creating lesson plans that would really capture the attention of the students and get them engaged in the lesson. Though it was hard work, it was also a lot of fun and a great chance to learn and grow. 

Like most learning experiences there is always room for improvements. I think that we could have been a bit more organized with with some aspects of our lessons. I learned that being organized is very important for having a successful lesson. At times I felt that students did lose focus and we struggled with regaining it. One other thing that I felt we struggled with was creating quick and effective introductions. We often spent too much time on this aspect of our lesson, which left use pressed for time in the end of our lesson. Though we do have some things to work on, it is clear that our third lesson was greatly improved compared to our first lesson. 

I also must say that having a group to work with was wonderful. I loved working with them, they were all so hardworking and determined. It was great being able to go back and forth with them, sharing ideas and help each other. This was a very stressful thing to do and I am glad that I had such a great group to do it with. I am so proud of all the hard work we did and I am excited to get back in front of the classroom and teach again. 

Final Day in the Classroom!

Last Day Working with the Students!

Friday was my last day teaching the second grade class, with my group. Though I was relieved that all the stress of lesson planning and preparing to teach was over, I was sad that it was over. Being the third and final day most of my nerves were gone. I was ready to get up in front of the class and teach them our cooperative learning lesson. We would be wrapping up on the topic of goods and services in the community. Our lesson really brought together a lot of the ideas that we had been teaching in our previous lessons. For this lesson students would be taking on a lot of the work. They had groups, jobs, and task that needed to be accomplished by the end of the class. 

Like our previous lesson we did a review of goods and services. We briefly had students talk among themselves about these words and what they meant and where they see them in their community. We then went to every group and had them share what they came up with. I definitely think that this took too much time. We could have easily asked each group to share one idea and then moved on. 

Activity 

For our final lesson with the students we really wanted them to tie in everything that they learned. To do this we had each group create there own communities. Before having students take control we went over somethings. We wanted to make it clear to the students that they would have to work well in their groups and get along. In order to do this we had to make it clear that all students within their groups need specific jobs. We listed the jobs on the board and also gave each group a list of the jobs. We gave students the freedom to chose their own jobs because this is important when it comes to working as a team. Along with a list of jobs, each group also had a paper with suggestions of things that should/could be in a community. 

We used an alien Voki to really catch the attention of the students. The alien shared a message with the students. He needed help creating a community and learning how to make a community work. Students were eager to help and began filling in a packet with the different things that would be in their communities. Students had to compromise and reach agreements in order to create successful communities. Each community was only allowed to have fourteen buildings, so this was a challenge for some groups. Once the whole group agreed on the buildings they wanted, they were then free to color and arrange the buildings in their community. 

To finish the activity, our professor Dr. Smirnova went to each group and asked about their communities. She asked the students why they chose certain buildings, the name of their community, and how they worked in their group. Students were then rewarded a certificate for their hare work. 

Overall I was very happy with the way this lesson turned out. Students knew exactly what needed to be done. They also worked very well in their groups, it was great to see them compromising in order to get their communities set up. The only thing that I would have changed was shortening our introduction. This lesson does require a good amount of time and towards the end I did feel like my group and the students had to rush to finish. I had a great time working with second grade!

Teaching Day 2!

Second Day in the Classroom!

Wednesday was my second time teaching in front of the second grade class. Like the first lesson I was nervous to get up in front of the class and teach, but this time it was for a different reason. My group had a bit of trouble making our indirect lesson plan, so I was nervous to see how it might turn out. We continued with the topic of goods and services in your community. Being an indirect instruction, the lesson was meant to be like a mystery, that the students would have to solve within their groups. I must say that this was the weakest of our lessons. We had limited time, which made us nervous and caused us to rush, with resulted in us leaving out certain importation that would have made our lesson more effective. Though this lesson was not perfect I still feel that it went fairly well, students seemed to understand and were very involved in the lesson. 

The lesson started with a review of goods and services. We did an interactive sort on the SMARTBoard, this reinforced the definitions of goods and services. Being part of the introduction, we definitely should have cut down the amount of time we spent on this activity. It was very repetitive and students began to lose focus. To view this activity click the image to the left.

Activity 

For the activity each group received an envelope that had about 3-5 phrases in it. As a group the students read the phrases and as a whole had to determine what service was being described. Students really liked this activity, but it did get a little out of hand. Before handing out the envelopes to the groups we should have gave a bit more direction about what the students should be doing. Also I think it would have helped if we went over different roles that each person in the group should have. This would have helped keep the activity a bit more organized. 

We then closed up the lesson by having the groups share their phrases and what service they thought was being described. We then asked the rest of the class if they agreed or disagreed. 



Overall I think that this lesson could have gone a bit smoother if as a group we just slowed down. Being our first indirect lesson plan I think it went okay, but there is definitely room for improvement.

Time to Teach!

First Day Teaching!

 

Monday was my first day teaching! I was very nervous to get up in front of the class and teach for the first time, but once I was finished I was excited bout doing it again. My group had the topic of goods and services in your community. This lesson was a direct instruction. It was more teacher based and we were just looking to see what the students knew about the topic and what we needed to tell them more about. The class seemed to have some background knowledge on goods and services, which was great!

 

For our less we started by asking students to share what they knew about goods and services. Then we went to our PowerPoint, this is where we had definitions and examples. We had three different activities that followed the PowerPoint. 

Activity 1

We had students tell us the definitions of goods and services in silly voices. 
 

Activity 2 

We allowed students to get more involved. Using the SMARTBoard, students took turns sorting the different images into goods and services. We then asked the rest of the class if they agreed or disagreed with the choice made. 

Activity 3 

We had students work on a T-chart activity. This was were they would have several pictures and they would have to sort them into goods or services and then glue them to the chart. 
 

Then we closed the lesson by asking students "what did you learn today?".  Student were eager to share what they learned! This is also when we assigned the students a homework assignment. This was a Social Studies journal. They had to write what they learned in class. This was our way of assessing what they had learned individually.



 Overall I felt like lesson one went very smoothly. Students were focused and engaged in the lesson. One thing I would have changed was the T-chart activity, I feel like it might have worked better as an independent assignment to test what they learned. To make activity two more interactive, we could have had the students work in groups.