We have just come to the end of our field work experience! I had a great time working with the fifth grade students and I really learned a lot through this experience. I learned that writing a lesson takes a lot of time and preparation. Many things go into planning a lesson and you shouldn't start it at the last minute. One thing that I learned is that although on paper a lesson may sound great it may not always go as planned when run in a classroom. All students respond differently to different lesson. I also learned that I really need to work on not saying the words "guys". It was really hard for me not to say it. I really enjoyed teaching the lesson and the activities we had because I think they were very effective and a lot of fun. I also learned that you need to rehearse and over plan! The more we rehearsed the better it ran.
When working with this class I discovered that managing a classroom is harder than it looks. With a classroom full of 30 fifth grade students things can get rowdy pretty quickly if you are not in control. It was also hard to tailor to every students needs in the class. I noticed that we need to pay attention to particular students because some work better together than others. There are so many different personalities at play in a classroom and because of this students don't always get along when doing group work. In the groups in our classroom students often resulted to name calling and being mean to one another. This taught me that I need to teach how to be a good group member and how to be respectful to one another. I think this will be easier in my future classroom because I will know how my students work better.
I feel that my expectations were met in this experience. I really expected to learn a lot from finally being able to teach a full class and I can honestly say I did. I learned so much about planning and how to be a presence in front of the classroom. I was able to watch my peers teach and learn from them as well.
I had always worried that I would be too quiet in front of classroom because I don't have a loud voice. After this experience I know that I have what it takes to be a classroom teacher. I know now that I can take charge and be flexible. I can write an effective lesson plan and teach in many different ways. This experience just made me more excited for my future.
Team teaching is also harder than expected. We had a hard time meeting and were left to plan things all at once. We had so many different ideas going around that it was hard to agree on one idea and plan it. Working as a group brings together many different challenges, but we over came those challenges in order to make an effective lesson. It was also a little unrealistic because I don't think in my future teaching I will ever be working to teach one lesson with five teachers! I think the students enjoyed this because they had different voices and views from each teacher.
