Micro Teaching

For these reflections just go with the flow and understand that my brain likes to jump around.... as you will surely be able to see...

Day 1:

Not satisfied. I had really awesome equipment with me, pants, boots, shirt, A WHOLE ENTIRE BACKPACK FULL OF FUN THINGS TO EXPLORE! And I just didn't do it how I pictured in my head. I have that problem sometimes when I don't follow my gut and always regret it. I had two different students come up and go through different sections of the pack and pull out all the equipment. When writing my lesson plan I envisioned them passing it around and really looking at it so everyone was engaged....but instead I just let him lay it on the table then I talked about it. People were interested but not truly engaged. I also read last night in the chapter 8 on classroom management that it is better to be strict then lighten up as you go because it is harder to become more strict as you so on. So today I tried to have fun with them but to also be strict and PROXIMITY CONTROL WAS NOT WORKING!! HELLO I AM BASICALLY STANDING ON YOU STOP TALKING!

AND I THOUGHT I LOST A STUDENT. Mrs. Rice observed me today and said there was about 30 seconds that my interest approach video ended and the students started talking.. but as I reflected on it on the drive home I realized that was when I thought I lost a student. One of the kids that had been in the front moved to the back of the room and I couldn't find him or remember where everyone else was sitting. So I was having a mental PANIC ATTACK and was about ready to run to Mrs. Rice and be like did a student leave? Did I really already lose a student? But then I found him a couple seats back... and I could get on with my lesson.

I was bad at timing. As I mentioned before I didn't the students engaged as I wanted to.. and I was moving really slowly at first, but then I checked the time and sped up to make sure I would cover everything, but then I went too fast and ran out of stuff so I did a choral response e-moment and reviewed the objectives and talked reviewed what we did today and what we will accomplish the rest of the week... so I DID TEACH UNTIL THE END OF THE BELL... it just happened a bit hap haphazardly.

For the last rant of the day, I don't know how to work macs.. I was confused about how to find my youtube video that I had pulled up before class. I also uploaded my powerpoint on two jumpdrives to be extra prepared.. but I uploaded Wednesdays powerpoint on one and Tuesdays on another.. and of course I would put the Wednesday one in first by accident, causing me to have a mini heart attack before checking my other jump drive. HEART ATTACKS FOR DAYS!

BUT. WE, THE INDIVIDUALS AT PENN STATE HAVE A GROWTH MINDSET I need to take what I learned today and fix it tomorrow. I didn't have a BAD lesson, it just wasn't PERFECT. But, I am not PERFECT, but I can IMPROVE. Which, I WILL DO TOMORROW.



Day 2:

Today went better than yesterday. We had a car of failures. I ran out of printing pages and only had 40 cents on me elion account to get more pages so Quinn thankfully let me use her pages but I forgot to switch it to only print on one ride for the pictures... which led me to have to change my instructions for the students. Which I need to work on my clarity of instructions.

I also need to not be passive. Passive, according to dictionary.com is "not reacting visibly to something that might be expected to produce a manifestations of an emotion or feeling." This is something I really need to work on because I want my students to know that I care about them. I know that we are only working with these students for three days, but I still care about them as human beings. It is also kind of scary that so many people tell me that I don't show emotion. This summer when I worked at the FACE youth conference with Farm Bureau, my group was working on a project and a girl asked me if I was even having any fun, and I told her I was having a blast and that I was really happy I was not in the office for a week and she told me that my face looked like I didn't want to be there... my response was that this is just my relaxed face. I'm going to have to work hard to show my students in the spring that I care about them, especially the first couple weeks until they can use to me and will be able to see that through my actions.

Another thing that this day has taught me is to really think about the audience that I am talking to. A lot of my information is too basic and it is hard to keep the students engaged since it is below them. They are a group of intelligent senior boys and need to be treated as such. I picked such an awesome and exciting topic for my micro teaching, but I am not utilizing it to its potential.

Today was a good lesson. Tomorrow will be better.


Day 3:

I had some cool bell work and interest approach that really got their attention! But then it went down hill and I lost their attention. As they walked in the door, I handed them note cards that had a definition that they needed to match on the board with tape. It really made them think individually and also work as a group to figure out what matched. After everyone had put their definition beside their term, I made all the students surround me and we looked to see if everything was correct. They did their too cool for school act since they didn't want to stand up since they just sat down, but I made them get up and their teacher said they were engaged.

Next I wanted to use a teaching strategy that we used during the inquiry based instruction at National FFA Convention. I wanted them to read the article individually and highlight what they thought was important. After they were done I wanted them to talk to their partner and compare what they highlighted. And thirdly, I wanted them to share with the class what they talked about. This is where I lost them. They didn't have the depth of discussion that I wanted them to, and they started to have side conversations. I wanted to jump into the class discussion to cut the side talk off and they got the points out of it that I wanted them too but it that spark I was looking for just wasn't there.

When we were going over the review Mr. May said that they needed a little more structure for that. They needed to have some questions that they should look for during the reading or have a little more instruction and structure to the reading. They don't have behavior issues, they just had a lot of stuff to talk about with each other: cars, hunting and girls.