Week 1 Reflection

What a week! I have learned so much and have had so much fun with all of the students. Going and doing this really reminds me about why I want to be a teacher. Working with the students has really opened my eyes up to the dynamics of a classroom. We sit and learn all of these strategies in our classes, but they don't mean a thing if we don't try them out in the classroom. So some of the things we tried: Teaching a concept development lesson, We have only done this type of lesson in our class with all adults and it went wonderfully, but with the 4th graders who had never done a lesson like that before, they really weren't able to do it correctly and it took them a lot longer than we had planned. I noticed that time thing a couple of other times. Everything takes so much longer than you are counting on, so i guess we just need to plan for things taking a lot longer than expected and also not be too disappointed when lessons don't work out or when things don't go the way we planned-- there will always be another opportunity to try again.

We were also able to teach another lesson about the pioneers during math time, so we had the students walk 1/4 mile and then figure out how many steps in a mile and how many steps in the journey & then graph it. This was our first lesson and gave me a little insight into keeping the class engaged. They would get excited and begin talking and getting their attention was very difficult for me because i'm just such a quiet person. Discipline and Attention are definitely things that i am working on and will probably be working on for a long, long time. All in all it was a really great week and i'm excited to go back for another week. :)