My first lesson went really well, Karen did a formal observation on me, and she was really impressed. Made me feel really good! J Turns out that I am teaching my science lessons during writing time, and that I will be missing 7 of my students during that time, as they will be going to get extra help for writing. Should I still include those students in my work sample? They will not be participating in ANY of the activities (which is REALLY lame!) I was able to get my bulletin board done for my work sample, it looks pretty gosh darn awesome! Hiccups for lesson one: Karen and I wanted the students to do a crossword puzzle – we did not look carefully at the crossword before printing and copying it, and it had vocabulary on their that we would not be touching. SO during reading time we had to quickly rewrite a crossword, and then print a new one. Second, I needed to work a little more on drawing out my students in the class who don’t talk as much, and are pretty quiet. Though I was able to get to a few, there were some that I forgot. Other than that, I think that lesson one went really well. Oh! And at first, I had some students that blurted out answers, and talked without raising their hand, I let a few go at first, and then began stamping them out as the lesson went on, but I needed to be a little stricter/firmer about not letting students get away with shouting out answers.
Question – If I just go through and answer the reflection questions printed on the rubric for my reflection, is that okay? Are there other questions that I should be hitting?
My second lesson, is my favorite so far (even though I have only taught 2). The students were SO engaged and interested in what was going on with the modern mysteries. It was really awesome to see and experience their excitement. This lesson, I was able to get most of my quiet students to talk/respond. That was really exciting for me, I realize that the more I build relationships with these students, the more I can get from them because the more they trust me etc. I only had a couple of setbacks within this lesson, one was a sentence frame that I gave students was a little confusing, and unhelpful. I was able to fix that, and correct the situation/problem. The last hiccup was a student in general. She is SO smart, but she tends to be VERY needy and literal. Instead of being able to go with the flow, she needs someone to walk her through. This was a little frustrating for me, but I want her to be able to become a little more independent, and so that is my goal for her within my work sample.
Last, Karen and I are still getting along quite well, she cracks me up, and I am continuously learning new things from her. One thing I have discovered, is that even though she is really smart, and comes from a background of child psychology, and seems to know a lot about her students, she tends to be slightly disconnected from her students. I feel that there are some students within her classroom that I know better than she does, and I know more about what is going on with student-to-students relationships within her classroom than she does. I find this kind of crazy since I have spent less time in the classroom than her, but I feel like this might be a difference in personalities. I think that I want to command my classroom through respect – I want to know my students well enough that I will be able to ask of them a lot, and they will know they can trust me, and I will know that letting me down will be a big disappointment. Karen commands her classroom through this way sort of, I guess I’m not quite sure how else she commands her classroom, and that will be something I will look for this week. It’s not fear…. But it’s close/kind of similar.
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