Success and Failure in my First Lesson

This was a busy practicum week! I actually visited Mr. Scott's classroom on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday morning. The big deal this week - I taught my first lesson.

The good news is that I think it went well. The students really seemed to learn from it. They were engaged in the lesson (for the most part) as they found the topic interesting. The responses that I got from students on their discussion forum and submissions were quite good. As an assessment strategy, their responses were great because they gave me an idea of where I could have spent more time on my lesson. I saw fairly quickly that I could have spent more time allowing students to think about causes of the Salem Witch Trials and the mass hysteria. Perhaps more discussion with each other around those causes would have been beneficial and maybe there would have been more variation in their responses. I think that most of the responses ended up being about the same because they went with the cause that I spent the most time discussing and they thought it was most valuable as a result of that time spent. If I was going to carry this lesson forward and put more emphasis on it, I would address this and have students discuss it more and take more time looking into additional causes and see how/if their responses changed as a result of that.

I also learned a valuable technology lesson. ALWAYS find a way to test your lesson's components out on the technology that the students will be expected to use. I didn't do this because I don't own an iPad. Next time I plan a lesson, I'll ask to borrow Mr. Scott's iPad during my practicum hours to make sure that it will work. I was able to adjust my lesson this time, but what would I have done if that adjustment wasn't easy to make? Or if it was impossible? I had additional ideas that could have been incorporated into the lesson, but none of them could have salvaged the lesson as a whole. It honestly would have been a disaster. That was a nice reminder for me. Just because I triple-checked the technology on my laptop and saw the lesson would work on my end does not mean that it will work on the iPads and that it will go as I plan there.

The best part about teaching this first lesson is what it has done for me after teaching. I'm more confident in the classroom now. I feel a million times more comfortable with the students. I can tell that they're more comfortable with me, too. So many students opened up to me on Wednesday, the first day I went back to Mr. Scott's room following teaching, and they spent more time talking to me. They also expressed excitement that I had taught them and they were asking when I would teach again. Some of these students were even part of that first group that I taught on Monday, where the lesson didn't go exactly as I had planned and they weren't as engaged in the lesson as following groups. This was reassuring to me that even though I felt like I had failed that group to some extent, they were still excited about the lesson I taught and could forgive that I wasn't as bright and cheery walking into the lesson at the beginning as I should have been.

I'm excited to see what the next two months holds for me. I'm a bit anxious about getting all of my lessons in as time is ticking down and students are now switching into a new unit, so it may be another couple of weeks before I get the opportunity to teach again. But, this will be a good test for me and Mr. Scott and see how well we can communicate with each other and work together to plan how we move forward. We'll see what happens next week, but I'm feeling good about where I am in the classroom and how I'm progressing in my teaching!