Field experience: Level up!
I taught my first full lesson of the first student teaching post today. I created some PowerPoint slides with images and maps, as well as a few key factoids. I’ve found that the best way to run PowerPoints is to have lots of images and minimal words. Children at the age of thirteen don’t generally have the attention span for lecture notes. Rather than simply lecturing, I like to constantly ask questions of the students to keep them on their toes. For some groups this works really well and I can get everybody to talk at least once. In other classes, the majority of students do not speak and I have a harder time getting everyone to participate. I can already tell which students are the ones who will have their hands in the air for every question (the way I used to in school) and which ones will be silent unless I prod them to respond.
At first I was afraid that the content of my lecture was not challenging enough for the students. Although I have worked with students of their age (around 13 years old) when I taught taekwondo, I am not sure yet what they know by now in terms of history, economics, and civics. I found, however, that the lesson went over fairly well. My last field experience was observing an AP class which had heavy reading and heavy lecture components. This class is a lot less high-stakes. I think I can relax a little about trying to overload on information before lecturing.
I had no trouble in the transition from observation to actual teaching, and was only little bit nervous before the first lesson. I found that teaching the same lesson five times in one day is actually not as difficult as I might have expected. Last semester, I only taught my lessons to one period, so I never got to repeat the same lesson twice. As a result, I was not sure what to expect. I found that I kind of like having the chance to tweak my timing on things and add extra things if necessary the second time around.
At first I was afraid that the content of my lecture was not challenging enough for the students. Although I have worked with students of their age (around 13 years old) when I taught taekwondo, I am not sure yet what they know by now in terms of history, economics, and civics. I found, however, that the lesson went over fairly well. My last field experience was observing an AP class which had heavy reading and heavy lecture components. This class is a lot less high-stakes. I think I can relax a little about trying to overload on information before lecturing.
I had no trouble in the transition from observation to actual teaching, and was only little bit nervous before the first lesson. I found that teaching the same lesson five times in one day is actually not as difficult as I might have expected. Last semester, I only taught my lessons to one period, so I never got to repeat the same lesson twice. As a result, I was not sure what to expect. I found that I kind of like having the chance to tweak my timing on things and add extra things if necessary the second time around.