#12

Teaching the sixth graders was so fun and taught me a ton. I definitely learned that sixth graders are not as young as I thought they were. They were a sharp group of students who kept us on our toes. I think, overall, things went very well. Despite our issues planning with our group, we came together when it came time to do the actual teaching. We supported each other well and taught our very best. We were able to answer the questions that the sixth graders shot at us, which felt good. They were interested in what we were doing, so they participated very well. Them taking notes didn't really happen, so in the future, I think I would need to have either a format that they can follow to help them, or give them more incentive to take notes. We told them to pay attention so they might be able to "do something cool" at the end of class, but that did not really help them know that they wouldn't get to launch as much without knowing the answers. I learned that when it comes time to launch the trebuchets, we need better defined rules of our game so there would be less yells of "CHEATER!!! SHE'S CHEATING!!!" We started to lose control of the class as they launched. I need to figure out how to let the students have fun but still be able tot have control of the classroom.

#11

As I have started reading the Classroom Instruction that Works book, I've found that there are many methods to do everything. There are pros and cons to all of them and a lot of deciding simply has to do with personal preference and style. Studies show that there are some methods that work better overall in some scenarios, but the significance is not very strong. What I take from this book is that as long as you know what you are doing and you are consistent and have a strong desire to improve the lives of your students, you will be a successful teacher. A lot of the strategies given in this book are contradictory to each other, so I will have to figure out which few I want to implement in my own classroom to be the most effective teacher I can be. I thought the section on Homework and Practice to be particularly interesting. It opened my eyes to why I had to have so much homework in High School. Each teacher was trying to get me to spend the recommended 50-60 minutes a day working on that subject outside of school. With six classes, I spent a lot of time outside school working on school work. If I understood as a student the reasoning behind the homework, I feel like I would have been less resentful of it at the time.

#10

I found, as I was preparing to teach sixth graders, that I am really happy that when I teach, I will be able to get input from others as I want it, but I can still make decisions for how I will run things in my classroom. I liked being able to brainstorm in a group to decide the best way to teach trebuchets to sixth graders, but I'm not sure I enjoyed the whole process. Having so many different teachers who have different styles made it so none of us could guide the lesson towards our personal styles. We were able to find a way to collaborate and make the most of our individual parts so we could briefly work in our strong areas. I feel like in our planning process, we were butting heads the whole time. We all had different ideas about what our main teaching goals should be, and therefore had issues maintaining good focus on those goals. Our lesson plan seemed disjointed and lacking strong focus.

#9

As I watched more classmates teach STLs, I also noticed that some people have a more natural "stage" presence. That presence makes it a lot easier for some teachers to adapt to the different questions or responses students give. Some teachers got flustered and confused when a student gave an answer they did not expect. Others, however, used it to improve their teaching moment. Some teachers it was hard to pay attention to because they natural speak in a monotone or very softly. Others made it fun to listen to them and they said stuff that made you want to keep listening. Some of the analogies used were so random and out there that it made it much more fun to listen to, even if they didn't work 100%. I would be curious to find the trade-off between crazy analogies that don't exactly work vs boring analogies that definitely work. I would think that some people would gain more from the crazy ones and other people would get confused by them. But if nobody is listening to the boring analogies, then nobody will learn even if they are good parallels.