Life is not a dress rehearsal. Stop practicing what you’re going to do and just go do it. In one bold stroke you can transform today. -Marilyn Grey

There are only so many times we can practice our lesson plans. Sometimes you just have to jump in with both feet, instead of dipping your toes in the water to test it. "Life is not a dress rehearsal. Stop practicing what you're going to do and just go do it. In one bold stroke you can transform today"- Marilyn Grey.

Monday 10/7/13:

Today was my first day of teaching in a whole class setting! I have never been more nervous to teach in my life! I reviewed the script and order of events repeatedly until I had it memorized in preparation for the lesson. 

Group 1: New York and the New Nation, planned to start the lesson with a Tagxedo presentation of the vocabulary words for our unit. Unfortunately, the software within the classroom did not support this type of media. We waited for a few minutes, hoping the technology would work, but it did not. The current student teacher critiqued this piece of our lesson. She suggested that if technology does not work, or it something does not go as planned time-wise, as teachers we should always find ways to keep the students engaged. She suggested asking questions or having students make predictions about what will be coming next within the lesson. After overcoming this glitch, our presentation of the Prezi presentation commenced. This portion of lesson went extremely well, with the exception of occasionally using informal language like guys, wanna or gonna.Our group also needed to work on checking student understanding and participation. Many of the students were unfamiliar with the note-taking sheet we had passed out to coincide with our Prezi. The classroom teacher suggested that we walk around the classroom in order to be aware of our students needs. After the Prezi, Group 1 moved on to an interactive game using the SmartBoard. Unfortunately, we did not have enough time to finish the game with our first section of the class.

Our second section of the class seemed to go a lot smoother. We implemented a check for understanding procedure; Students were asked to place their hands on their heads when they were on the correct Prezi slide or when they completed filling in the blanks on the note sheets. This allowed us to move to the students whose hands were not on their heads and provide additional assistance. We skipped the Tagxedo presentation, which allowed us to devote more time to the SmartBoard games.

For my future lessons,  I plan to pay more attention to my language usage within the classroom. I want to present myself as knowledgeable and professional whenever I am working with students. I also will implement ways of checking for understanding more consistently in order to provide assistance when necessary and allow student independence whenever possible. I also will videotape myself as often as possible to learn and take note of my strengths and weaknesses while teaching.


Wednesday 10/9/13:

On Wednesday, groups 1 and 2 reflected on our first fieldwork experiences. The members of my group are very much like me: hard on themselves. Each of us had a lot of things we thought we should work on during our future lessons in the classroom. After seeing our video, I definitely feel that I need to make a more conscious effort to project my voice. My voice dropped often throughout the lesson, making it difficult to hear from the back of the room. I think projecting my voice better would eliminate extra questions and confusion from students seated at the rear of the room.

I am very happy that we were able to videotape our lessons. This is a new factor, EDTPA, that I will be experiencing when I student teach next fall. By videotaping myself now, I will learn how to make every minute of the lesson count by using formal language, projecting my voice, and keeping students engaged. Another factor of the EDTPA is reflecting on the video and planning for future lessons. I like that Dr. Smirnova incorporated this reflection process into our lesson today.


Friday 10/11/13:

Today was our second day of fieldwork. Today we focused the class through an inquiry lesson. We began the lesson by reviewing what we had learned on Monday and viewing the Tagxedo presentation. During the first section of our class, I forgot to transition from the review to the new topic: becoming historians. My group members pointed this out to me during our second preparation period. I was aware of this mistake, and made sure to appropriately transition during our second section of class.

Next, we moved on to talking about historians, artifacts, and tips for using artifact bags. The students seemed engaged in this part of the activity because they were excited to participate in the following activity: artifact bag exploration. The students thoroughly enjoyed this part of the lesson. They explored their bags, wrote down their findings in the accompanying worksheets, and shared their findings with the class. 

Time is always a factor with our lessons. We also were unaware that Fridays are "no homework" days at Bishop Dunn. Our assigning of homework resulted in a lot of verbal protest from the students. Next week, we plan to incorporate our independent practice activities into the lesson in order to not give homework to the students on a Friday.

Overall, I am learning many interesting things while completing this fieldwork about myself, working with others, social studies instruction, and fourth grade students.