This past week we had our last lesson to teach at Brigham.
We got to work with a very small group during our Engineering Fair, we only had
three students to four teachers. Imagine what that would be like if those were
our real student to teacher ratios. We were going to teach them about bridges.
To my surprise the students knew an awful lot about bridges.
Something that I personally struggled with was when to jump
in and add a thought or comment I had during the lesson. Co teaching is a great
experience for us to get before we go into the field. I guess maybe as a group
we should have decided who was going to cover each section of the lesson. I did
not want to say something and cut someone else off. I worry that to my group it
looks like I was not focused and prepared to teach that day when in reality I just
was trying to stay out of the way.
In relation to my goals I feel that I did work towards them
in this lesson, but they were not fully achieved. I talked more about this in
my Final Reflective Essay. These students were quick learners and really made
teaching the lesson fun. I feel that they were strong English speakers for a
majority of the lesson. At one point while we were handing out the cars one of
the students repeated the car color to us in Spanish after we said what it was
in English. When we had them work on drawing their own bridge the students were
almost talking under their breath in Spanish. I could not figure out if they did
not want us to hear them or that they did not want us to know what they were
saying. Pretty sneaky for a five year old if you ask me. This showed me that
maybe we did not create a welcoming environment for them were they felt like
they were welcome to practice their English. Was it just the fact that we were
new teachers to them and that we strongly outnumbered them? I cannot know for
sure. What I do know is that if students are switching between two languages it
is not in our best interest to require them to use only one language. I will
end up working with students who are diverse and have these amazing abilities
to code switch quickly in another language.
One goal that I do not feel like I made much progress with in
my instruction making, many times I found myself having to repeat instructions.
I know that this is a part of my job, but that also tells me something was not
clear to my students. Something was missing. As I get more practice in the
classroom and through PDS I hope that I can write up directions in a very straight
forward manner.
Here are the work sheets we had the students complete during
their time with us:
Exceeds: I included pictures from our lesson of the student’s
work.
