After spending a great amount of time at my assigned middle school, I have been able to teach the class. Not only was it a requirement for my class, but my CT was very excited to see my teaching skills at work. Although it was my first time teaching a lesson without any assistance from my CT, I think it went pretty well. I taught second hour a lesson on written poetry and song lyrics. During the lesson, we compared and contrasted our thoughts on analyzing poetic elements through watching a play and reading the text. Many of the students said that it was more enjoyable to hear the song, but they said that it was easier to analyze poetry in text because they have the text in front of them and are able to look at the words, rather than listen to them once. The rational for this lesson was to prepare them to listen to a play. As I thought about the play, I noticed the relationship between poetry written and sung lyrics in a play and thought that it would be an excellent lesson to both review poetry and prepare them to view the play.
I learned that saving paper may not always be the way to go in an English class. Even though saving paper is being friendly to the environment, it may be more beneficial for students, especially those who are kinesthetic learners, to have a piece of paper with text on it in their hands that they can write on and take notes. I learned this today, among other things, from my lesson evaluator. On a positive note, she said that it was a good lesson and was also very organized in planning. I was a little nervous to teach and be evaluated because it is a little nerve wrecking when someone is in the back of the room judging every move that you make.
Some of the students today, during my lesson that I taught, were a little disruptive. During second hour, when I was being evaluated, one of the students was sitting incorrectly and fell on the floor. Not only did this completely disrupt my class, but it caused me to lose track of what was going on. During 5th hour, when my CT asked me to teach again, another student almost did the same exact thing. To add to that, two students were being disruptive and not participating in the work and I was a little disappointed that my evaluator was not present to see how well I handled those two situations. It was during individual work, and the two students were off tasks, so I walked over to them, asked what they were doing, then asked them to not waste any more time and resume work. I think that I handled it well because both students resumed their individual work.
Overall, I think the lesson that was evaluated went well. Although it was not perfect and I found room for improvement, I think that the students enjoyed it and now I know where I need to work harder. This is a learning process, and I would rather make mistakes now and work out the kinks so that I will be able to be the most effective teacher that I am able to be.
I learned that saving paper may not always be the way to go in an English class. Even though saving paper is being friendly to the environment, it may be more beneficial for students, especially those who are kinesthetic learners, to have a piece of paper with text on it in their hands that they can write on and take notes. I learned this today, among other things, from my lesson evaluator. On a positive note, she said that it was a good lesson and was also very organized in planning. I was a little nervous to teach and be evaluated because it is a little nerve wrecking when someone is in the back of the room judging every move that you make.
Some of the students today, during my lesson that I taught, were a little disruptive. During second hour, when I was being evaluated, one of the students was sitting incorrectly and fell on the floor. Not only did this completely disrupt my class, but it caused me to lose track of what was going on. During 5th hour, when my CT asked me to teach again, another student almost did the same exact thing. To add to that, two students were being disruptive and not participating in the work and I was a little disappointed that my evaluator was not present to see how well I handled those two situations. It was during individual work, and the two students were off tasks, so I walked over to them, asked what they were doing, then asked them to not waste any more time and resume work. I think that I handled it well because both students resumed their individual work.
Overall, I think the lesson that was evaluated went well. Although it was not perfect and I found room for improvement, I think that the students enjoyed it and now I know where I need to work harder. This is a learning process, and I would rather make mistakes now and work out the kinks so that I will be able to be the most effective teacher that I am able to be.
