Week two at Peotone Junior High has been a pleasant one. I firmly believe that the majority of students have gained respect for me. I personally thought I wasn't going to get this much respect by week two. I thought this specifically because of the variety of age groups and how they tend to respond to a student-teacher. I have been leading the class for a good week and a half now. With that being said we've done a lot of the things that are necessary to get done at the beginning of the school year. Thursday we started our first unit, flag football. I thought this was a good unit to do in the fall because it is football season at the high school level. Day one of flag football I didn't run the show by myself. My cooperating teacher and I did a co-taught class. With how many students we have, this was very beneficial for student learning. Each class is mixed with 6th through 8th graders. With that being said, students ability towards throwing and catching a football varies. We split partners and groups equally. Thus, I thought this was a significant part of this specific lesson. Some new strategies I have learned are ques to bringing students back into the lesson. My cooperating teacher has a variety of ques that are beneficial in which I will definitely take to my future classroom. My new insight into how the students will make me a better instructor is being more clear. It's been a trial and error of being more clear or not being more clear. I've been far from perfect these two weeks but when I am prepared and clear lessons will then go well and most importantly student learning will be enhanced. My goal from last week has not been fully met. I have started to remember students names and their interests but to be completely honest learning every single boy's name is going to take time. My new goal for this upcoming week is to teach not only skills within flag football but student to student communication and leadership skills on the field.
This week we started really getting into our volleyball unit. With the second grade we taught them different ways to throw the ball over the net which was a necessary skill for a game call Newcomb we played on Wednesday and Thursday. The students really like this game. It's a modified game of volleyball but you throw the ball 3 times on each side instead of bumping, setting, spiking, and serving. The third and forth grade we started off having them serve early in the week and work them into playing an actually volleyball game later in the week. As this can be the very first time the third grade has ever played in a volleyball match before it was vital to be extremely clear while instructing. I improved throughout numerous times of instructing the material. My goal was to write at least one lesson plan. I achieved this goal. My new goal set for next week is communicate with parents and schedule parent meetings for parent conferences which is coming up in two weeks. Classroom Confi...
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ReplyDeleteJoey, Excuse my first entry. I have been having trouble posting to your blog and I think it has been corrected now. I enjoyed reading our blog and it appears that you are off to a good start. I agree that clear communication is very important and that comes with experience. It requires patience. One day and one lesson at a time. Your goal of learning all your students names this week is a good one. They will relate to you better and you to them. Talk to your CT and give me a few visit dates and times. Keep up the good work.
DeleteJoey, I think co-teaching is a great way to begin. In fact it's not a bad way to continue either. I'm surprised that 6th - 8th grades are all together for PE. There can be such a wide range of abilities in this spread. Is it because of the number of students?
ReplyDeleteYou said, "My cooperating teacher has a variety of ques (questions?) that are beneficial." Like what? What have you learned specifically? Can you give an example of when you were not clear and what happened?