- What kind of activities do students/class enjoy most?
- What are some things you are going to need to remember when you teach your first/second lesson?
- What have you learned so far from the experience?
- What can I do to make this a more enriching experience for you?
Sunday, September 25, 2011
Week Three- Questions
Please respond to at least 3 of the following questions. Then respond to two of your peers.
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Through this experience so far, I have come to realize that student’s most enjoy activities that they can do well. After thinking about it, everyone seems to desire to do things they are good at. If I know that I can’t play a sport very well, I am not going to wish to play it; and if I know I have enough skill to succeed, I will want to participate. This seems like common sense, but it wasn’t something that I applied to teaching until this semester. Students ultimately want to succeed and crave the feeling of success. This can work toward our advantage as teachers because, well, we want them to succeed too! Even when it might not feel like it, teachers and students are working toward the same goals.
ReplyDeleteWhen teaching my lessons it will be comforting to keep this idea in mind. I will also have to remember to use all the classroom management techniques that I have seen and been practicing up to this point. Flexibility will also be important because I do not know how the students will handle the activity or react to what I will be teaching. If something is not going as I had planned or imagined, it may be to my advantage to deviate from the original plan and try something else.
Ms. Decker, has done an excellent job of making this an enriching experience. It has been so good for me to just go for things and jump right in. All of her suggestions have made an impact on how I look at classroom management and at teaching. I loved it when I walked into the classroom and she said “Hey change of plans, want to teach this mini lesson I wrote up?” Doing this taught me how to carry out a lesson put on paper. There are plenty of opportunities in my education to learn to write a lesson, but the fun part is carrying it out and seeing the impact that it has on students.
After teaching my first lesson this past week, there are a multitude of things I need to remember for my second. The lesson had its ups and its downs and as a good teacher should, reflecting on the downs as well as the ups will help to make lessons better. Going into my second lesson I would really love to have my student based activity more defined. My first lesson ran a bit longer than I had anticipated, and so the student- oriented portion was not emphasized. By emphasizing the end of the lesson and in addition bringing a culmination event to the experience the second half of my lesson would be much more meaningful to the students.
ReplyDeleteIn this experience I have learned to always take a positive approach. These children are young and rather than going straight to a yellow or asking them to quite down. It is important to highlight the students that are exhibiting the correct behavior, and the other students are much more willing to follow along. The children want positive attention and by praising the good behavior and ignoring misbehavior more, the misbehavior changes.
Overall as a mentor teacher, Ms. Decker, has created a great experience. I love the fact that I was given as much freedom to be involved with the kids, as I was comfortable. It made this level 2 a really great experience, full of meaningful interactions as well as a huge confidence booster! I honestly don’t think anything should be changed for the future level 2 participants. It was great, exhausting at times, but great!
Ms. Sarah,
ReplyDeleteGood luck on your lesson this up coming week! It can be stressful, but so satisfying once it is finished. The students are great and some I am sure everything will go wonderfully for you, but just beware the children get so involved you can't stop them from making comments or asking questions. I guess there could be worse issues. Ms. Decker really has created a great learning environment for both the students as well as us, and you that should definitely ease you as you give your lesson!
It seems that the most enjoyable activities are either hands on activities or ones where the students do individual work. I believe these activities are enjoyable because the students are at that age where they have lots of energy and need to release it in some way, and also like to have the feel of being able to do something on their own. When doing hands on activities it gets the students more engaged in what they are learning and helps them focus on what they are doing, instead of focusing their attention on something else. This makes learning enjoyable for students who now feel they are actually a part of what is taking place in the classroom. They also seem to like individual activities where they are in “charge” of what they are doing. I have seen a couple times where students can’t all come to a decision together and argue what they should do. However, when they work independently they are usually very content with what they are doing. Given the situations when they are lost in the activity and don’t know what they are doing, then they may not be enjoying the activity.
ReplyDeleteA few things I will need to remember when I teach my lessons is that the students are only going to be as engaged as I am in the lesson, that I will have to give specific instructions on little things such as raising a hand and when to move in the room, as well as remembering that not everything will go as planned. I will need to make sure I am on top of things while I teach and stay connected with the students throughout the lesson to keep their attention. I will also need to give specific instructions during transition and when asking a question so there does not become a sudden burst of voices or movement while giving directions. When asking a question I need to remind the students to raise a quiet hand, and when transitioning from the carpet to the desks to have them sit and wait until after my directions are finished, etc. Lastly I will need to be prepared to make adjustments to my plan as the lesson goes on. I can’t prepare for every little thing that might happen, but instead be ready to be flexible in the situation.
The biggest thing I have learned in this experience is that it takes a lot more than just teaching to teach younger students like first and second graders. They take more patience as well as specific instruction. Without these two things they would be terribly hard to teach. At a younger age they have more energy and are still learning to behave appropriately and need much guidance. This takes time from the actual lesson, reminding them to sit still and not blurt out answers and raise their hand, to reminding them of how to enter a room or wait their turn to talk. Each of these situations as well as others need to be addressed more often than in older grades. They also need specific instruction, when too generalized in explanations or instructions students may be confused or get the wrong idea and do what they want instead of what the teacher asked. Clear directions help for a smoother lesson and transitions throughout the day.
Miss Sarah,
ReplyDeleteI like the way you explained what kinds of activities students enjoy. What you said is so true and all teachers need to be reminded of this. So many don’t apply it to teaching and that is where the disconnection between student and learning takes place. If all teachers thought of how to make all students feel they will be successful in the class and start participation, then a lot more learning would take place in a classroom. Not only learning, but enjoyable learning will take place where students are having fun in the lesson and not getting distracted by other things.
Miss Downey,
I feel you touched on something I need to remember and use while teaching my lessons. In order to keep getting the responses you want you must acknowledge and positively reinforce it. If students only hear you comment when they are bad, but never when they are good, then it would give them no reason to be good. The only time they would get a response from you is when they do something wrong. By flipping it to mostly acknowledging the good things, this will positively reinforce the students to behave the way you would like them to.
Ms. Devens,
ReplyDeleteOh my gosh the “giving specific directions” point is so important! You are right on. As you know, I taught a lesson on creating word problems on Wednesday of this week. Since we did not have time to finish the project, some of the students got time to work on them again on Friday. I made the assumption that they remembered all the directions from Wednesday because they had a clear understanding of what I wanted that day. However, the understanding was forgotten sometime between Wednesday and Friday. As I looked at the work they did on Friday in finishing up their project I found that I could have taught the majority of the lesson over again to remind them. Unfortunately, I did not do much reminding unless students specifically asked. This was a big mistake, and made me realize that children have to hear information over and over again before they retain it permanently.
Ms. Downey,
You were very right, finishing that lesson was satisfying! Most satisfying was seeing what the students did on paper and hearing what a professional thought about the lesson. Also, what you said about focusing on student’s strengths and positive decisions is definitely a good idea! We want to reinforce the things we want to see more of and make sure to not reinforce the things we don’t want to see. However, today I had a behavior issue that I could not simply ignore because one student intentionally hurt another. This happened in the lunch line and I struggled with how to handle it. I knew I needed to take the students aside and figure out between the two what had happened, so I did. I then asked the boy to apologize to the boy he hurt, and he did, but felt no remorse about what he did because he wanted to do it. I told him that because what he had been unkind and his actions were inappropriate that his consequence would be to go to the end of the lunch line, and receive his lunch last. I noticed that he started to get upset as he stood there. This was very confusing! Looking back on it now, I wonder if there wasn’t more to the situation than I knew about. I wish I would have went back to the student to inquire further, but at the time I wanted him to feel remorse for what he had done, so he needed to deal with the consequences of his actions. It was a learning moment for me, but I guess I mostly just afraid of giving him too much attention for a negative behavior.