2nd classroom experience!

The teacher candidates did today's lesson a bit different than the last. Most of the time was spent with the teacher candidates split up into four different groups, so there wasn't much to observe besides the initial review of the lesson.

They started off the lesson by doing a review of the lesson from two days before. Siobhan did a great job of kind of guiding the students towards the answer she was looking for. She also had good positive reinforcement which is always important. One thing I noticed frequently was the teacher candidates reading directly off the slide and looking at that more than the students. I don't doubt at all that I will surely do that when it's my turn, but I think that's one thing that probably everyone in the class could work on. It just becomes distracting when the teacher had their head constantly turned to the slide and reading it instead of just knowing it, but I don't blame them because I bet it's nerve wracking up there!

 I was really happy to see that Kelsey was speaking up more this lesson because in the past one she was a little on the quiet side. She knows the material and I think her questions are well thought out and I can tell the students really like her. She is very sweet to the kids which I know they appreciate.

One thing I really didn't like in the lesson and was really bothered by, was when Alicia called Steve out when he made a simple mistake. Steve said that it was the last slide and Alicia goes "No Steve, there's one more slide, this isn't the last slide". Honestly I thought it was rude and embarrassing. I know Alicia is very outgoing and outspoken, which I really admire when she's teaching, but I think she could've found a different way of correcting him, such as "Oh no Steve, there's one more slide! Simple mistake we all make them!" or just not have corrected it at all because he would've realized it after there was another slide.

When the teachers broke off to work with their groups I really could only observe Alicia and Siobhan. There wasn't much to really observe besides them give out jobs, but something comical actually did happen which I thought Siobhan handled great. A man's last name that they were reading about was Sexting, of course the students said Sexting and cracked up that it had the word sex it, typical fourth grade mind! Siobhan handled the situation very well though she said "Come on we're adults here right? We're going to be producing a movie soon! We need to act like adults then!" I thought that was great because the kids stopped laughing and got more serious, she didn't engage in their laughter and didn't laugh too which was really mature and appropriate of her.

I can't wait to see the next group of teachers teach!!

First Day of Observing My Fellow Students at work!!

Today was the first day of fieldwork, I (luckily) just had to observe my fellow students Steve, Alicia, Kelsey, and Siobhan as they got the ball rolling for us. I really have to applaud them because I would not have wanted to go the first week. I felt bad that they were kind of just thrown in there almost because we had such little time to prepare but they sure rose to the occasion and did a great job!
I took a lot of notes of things I really liked that the group did and some things that I wish they'd improve on, and most of those are just tiny things that are easily fixable once the nerves are gone.

I really enjoyed how they started off the class with a movie, I think that was a great attention grabber for the students who were all wild with excitement about meeting us. I think it calmed the students down for a bit and made them focus on something, which really worked. I also thought it was really good how, I believe it was Steve, told them to pay attention for words they didn't know or things that were interesting, I think that really helped the students focus because they knew they were going to be asked a question after. The teacher candidates also did a good job of keeping the students focused on answering the question with seriousness after the video ended.

The one thing that bothered me while they were teaching was when Alicia contradicted Kelsey. The teachers asked the students what they were interested in learning about he movie making business, a student said something about cheese, Kelsey tried to control the laughter by asking the students to ask serious questions they had, but Alicia played along with the student and said something about cheese being on the sets and that's an understandable question. I just thought it was rude to contradict one of the fellow teacher candidates in front of everyone like that. I don't know if Alicia did it on purpose, I doubt she did, but I just hope for the future she just works with her cooperating teacher better in that situation. However, I really did like the way Alicia explained what a business. She picked up pencil and said that if she has a factory that produces pencils and she sells them to classrooms does she have a business? I thought that was a good, easy, simple way to explain what a business was so that all the students understood.

The teacher candidates did a really good job of calling on different students each time and asking them a lot of questions to make sure they had a good understanding of each term they were presented. I especially liked how Steve interacted with the students because sometimes he would call on a student but another teacher candidate would call on a different student, but he didn't forget about the student he called on he told he/she that he promised they would go next, and he kept his word which I know the students really appreciated.

I liked the slides they used, I think they should've have picked a different color for the lines to match at the end, it was really hard to see the lines. However I think their slides were done well. There was just a few bits of information on each slide so that it wasn't too overwhelming for students.

I think the teachers did a great job! I'm excited to see how the rest of their lessons turn out!