There have been many experiences so far with students, lesson planning, GRADING, etc. Even though this has been a great experience so far there are still many great moments to come (hopefully). It has been a pleasure to be able to observe and work with my CT. She has about 30 years of experience in both a big high school setting (10 years) and a small high school setting (20 years). She has an old school style view of respect and behavior. The kids respond well to this. They want structure and discipline and she is there to give it to them.
The biggest problem that I face as a future teacher is lesson planning. Where do I find the time to make up great lessons to help my students learn the material? It is quite a paradox. My CT has definitely helped me do this. Her lesson plans are differentiated for her 6 class periods. It is not a "cookie cutter" type of lesson nor does she ever get bored with what she is teaching. She enjoys challenging her students and making them think for the answer or through the process.
My lesson planning skills have been revised over the past couple weeks. Not dramatically, but at least I am starting to refine my thoughts. Not only do I want to make my thoughts concise, but I want them to be fruitful for the students to learn. The biggest challenges I face when lesson planning or developing a lesson is a starting point. I haven't seen these kids learn for several years (which my CT is very helpful for). I don't know what skills they have to begin so I have trouble beginning too difficult or too easy (boring).
One particular skill that I am striving to work on is the use of "wait time". I have a bad habit of asking a question and as the words are coming out of my mouth I think it is a poor question. So then I immediately re-ask my question in a different way. After the second question is asked I just feel that I am confusing the students so I just answer the question myself. Thus it begins a downhill spiral of boredom for the students because I'm not making them think.
I haven't had to do much lesson planning on my own so far. I am a little nervous to start using my own ideas and lessons, but I think that only by taking this step that I will be able to refine and improve my abilities in my future profession.
I like how you emphasized grading. I have noticed that the structure and discipline work really well with my fourth and sixth period Math 8 classes. They work much better when it's a structured lesson. When it comes to creating great lessons, my CT has reminded me that you can't always be great and create awesome lessons. This is a difficult concept for me to accept. I have determined what very useful tool for creating lessons is to determine the underlying concept that is at hand. What exactly is the point of today's lesson and WHY does it actually make sense? Keep these two things in mind and everything will fall into place!
ReplyDeleteSomething that we have discussed in classes and a few conferences that I have been to about accumulating lessons. Perhaps you can go about your normal routine in teaching and once or twice a month plan a lesson that you would consider to be really well done. Then, over time you can cycle through the lessons and increase your repertoire. In addition, you do not have to create everything yourself. Teachers have a lot of resources. One thing I like about our class and the community we have built is that we can share ideas and lessons. In the future, I would be happy if we could all create a place to store our "good" lessons and share. With fifteen of us creating good lessons, we could create quite a bit of content.
ReplyDeleteYes, lesson planning can be challenging-especially when determining where to begin. I have received advice similar to what Logan mentioned. One of the teachers in my school said that teaching from the book saved her the first year. After that, she made notes on what students understood well or what students needed more help with and slowly accumulated her own ideas and activities. As far as what to do right here and now in student teaching I have found it better to play it safe. There are always some students who need a refresher or who don't remember concepts that I assume they will know. So I usually incorporate some kind of warm-up that assesses where they are at with the necessary prerequisite knowledge and go from there. Also, some may consider Pinterest a girl thing, but I have found a lot of great lesson ideas on it! The resources are there, it's just about finding the time to search through all of them. If you get the lesson planning balance of being not boring but still accessible figured out, let me know how!
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