Part II of being the one at the front of the room

Image source: http://www.aps.edu/human-resources/student-teachers/student-teachers-1/M38fee6cc49f429b28453e4817490d3b8.PNG

So, the first part was over with - yay! After the initial shock of - oh my goodness I am really going to be in the classroom, how do i do this?! I realized that this was going to become my normal, it was no longer this intimidating concept that I would one day have to tackle, it was my reality.

That being said, going into mini-lesson two I felt a lot different. I had already done it once and my goal for this lesson was to work on the feedback that my cooperating teacher had given me. He mentioned that I was a little quick to run through directions and repeating myself wouldn't hurt. For this next activity, I made sure that the students had clear directions, I traveled the room while I spoke, and repeated myself in different ways. The activity was an assembly line simulation and I even gave visual examples of a treadmill or a grocery store line so students could visually imagine what an assembly line looked like.

My cooperating teacher taught the lesson first, which was very helpful because I was able to sit in the back and listen to the students, hearing the things that they struggled with and were confused by, and hone in on the parts that most of them easily understood.

While I felt I did better explaining directions in this lesson, there are definitely other things i need to work on. One of them being objectives. My objective of the lesson was for students to understand how poor social life was for Americans working in factories due to the poor conditions and boring repetitive work. Unfortunately, when I discussed the lesson at the end and asked students what they learned about assembly lines and factory workers, they didn't quire get what I wanted them too. I know that if I ever used this lesson again I would need to adapt it to better teach the objectives.

I am very happy that the students are respectful when I am in front of the room and they participate in the activies I ask of them to do. I feel satisfied with my two lesson so far, however, I know I have a lot of learning to do.