Discoveries on planning and teaching lessons: During the fieldwork experience I made several realizations about how it is to plan and teach lessons. The biggest realization was that even if you spend a lot of time planning and practicing a lesson, it still may not go according to plan. I felt very comfortable with my lesson and the information when planning, but when I was teaching it was not how I pictured. Teaching involves being flexible. Another part of teaching that I discovered was how fast the time goes by. When I was teaching it did not feel as though I was talking for a long time, but when I factored in the student responses and comments it added up and I was not able to get as much done as I had hoped. At one point I called on a girl and she did not answer the question, but started telling a story about a time that she went to North Carolina with her family. This took up a couple minutes, which I could have used to teach. Although it is important to stay on schedule I tried to be flexible in order for this girl to feel as though what she had to say was important. My lesson from this is to try and tell the students to keep and comments or off task questions until the end of the lesson or when I ask if there are questions.
Discoveries about students: When getting to the classroom the first thing I noticed was how decorated the walls were. There was student work and posters on the wall, which I was glad to see. I also discovered that the older students, since we were in fifth grade are very willing to share. This was not the case when I worked with younger students. These students are also very competitive. They tend to bicker and argue with each other when they do not agree on something. During the jeopardy game the students were yelling and crying because of the intensity and competitive nature of their peers. With this being said it is important to plan ahead and have strategies ready to diffuse these situations as soon as they start to happen. Another important way to avoid this is to talk about how to properly work in groups prior to the lesson and how important it is to develop these skills. My expectations were met by this fieldwork, I was glad that the students were so willing to participate and open minded to the lessons. The students were also very smart and remembered and understood the information that was given to them. It was impressive how well they were able to recall information from past fieldwork sessions as well.
Discoveries about self during lessons: During the fieldwork sessions I made discoveries about myself. I discovered that group teaching is more difficult for me than independently teaching students. Although I feel as thought it was helpful during the lesson planning process to have more ideas and minds working on the activities and writing the lessons, during the actual teaching process it was difficult to work around and transition easily with each other. With this being said, in the future I need to work on teaching lessons with my peers. Aside from this, I enjoyed the experience and feel as though it was a true learning experience for me. At first I was nervous about teaching in front of my peers and other teachers, but once I got in front of the class I enjoyed it. I am excited to get back in the classroom!
Discoveries about team teaching: As I mentioned, I found the team teaching to be harder than individually teaching. There were more than one reason for this. One was that everyone has very different schedules and it is difficult to meet. This interfered with how comfortable we were working together in the classroom. I believe if we were able to practice more the lessons would have gone smoother, Another reason I found this to be difficult was that it makes choosing activities more difficult. However, being able to discuss ideas with other people during the planning process was very helpful. The lesson I learned from this discovery is that if there are several people working together it is important to start the process far ahead of time in order to have more time to meet and practice the lessons. I feel that I would like to do this method of teaching again in order to become better at it!
