Field Work Grand Finale

Field Work Grand Finale

Just thinking about this week, I honestly felt so stressed out. Now I know how teachers must feel when they know that they have an upcoming observation in their classroom. I've been so nervous thinking about how everything will play out. I keep finding myself looking at the negatives about what could possibly go wrong during the lesson instead of focusing primarily on the positives. I'm hoping that everything will go as planned, but there will always be those couple of mistakes that happen here and there, it's practically unavoidable. I just have to believe that nothing will go wrong.

     As a member of Group #4, I can honestly say that getting through this week has lifted some weight that desperately needed to get off our shoulders. Personally, I was very anxious when I felt that I needed to teach not only in front of the whole class while they were critiquing my teaching, but I was also being videotaped. I was very nervous, in fact, almost scared that I would embarrass myself because as the last group to teach, I felt as if I were obligated to be the best example of what each instruction should look like.

     When I introduced the direct instruction, I felt absolute relief as if I didn't have to worry about anything and my inner teacher woke up. The Direct Instruction went practically according to plan except we were under time. I was surprised that we were under time, but I was happier that we weren't over time and that we were able to complete everything that we had planned for this lesson. As a member of Group #4, I felt that an explicit instruction was much appropriate and necessary for teaching the vocabulary in this lesson. The topic of Choosing Our Country's Leaders was a challenging topic to deal with when trying to think of activities for guided practice and for find engaging and exciting examples to go along with our definitions. I believe that most of the information that was covered in this lesson could have been brought out more in teaching, but with the time restrictions, it was hard to find simple and quick things to use in order to teach all of the words properly. 

      The day of the inquiry and cooperative instruction, I was very nervous considering that we had to cut our lesson about 15 minutes early. I was very paranoid prior to teaching this lesson because I was so fixated on not having enough time to squeeze both types of teaching into one lesson. During the inquiry session, the students played and followed along according to the interview. Everything worked perfectly in my eyes and I was very surprised. I spent all morning stressing out about it and there was nothing to worry about after all. The inquiry instruction consists of a dramatic play interview between the teacher candidates and the 2nd graders. During the cooperative learning lesson, although we had a limited amount of time and we had to rush through our lessons, the concept of this lesson and objective were still met by all of the students. (I will post up a picture of the voting booth when I upload it.) 

I enjoyed every minute teaching in front of the class. It really gave me a feeling of what it will be like in the future when I actually have my own classroom. I feel more prepared and relieved to know that I achieved my goal. This experience had a lot of twists and turns, but I'm glad that I was a part of it.