Today Shannon and I taught our thematic lesson. I was really nervous which was really obvious when I began talking really fast and answering questions when I should have waited and embraced the silence. Its surprising any of the students understood what I was saying because I felt like I was talking a mile a minute. However I started to get over it and relax once the lesson started to move forward. I think the lesson went really well. We got really great feedback from the students through participation during the lesson and comments after.
One comment I agreed with was I thought the discussion and opening took up a lot of the time. We covered tons of information and concepts, however it took up 25 out of the 54 minutes of the lesson. We were unsure how to structure the lesson because 55 minutes is a long time and the teaching teams before us had issues with time management. A way we tried to do this was to involve the students through questions and answers. However the discussion although successful only involved 5 out of the 25 students. Most were engaged but not participating, we did not plan for this when we wrote out our lesson plan. To fix this problem we started to get students involved without talking. I asked them to raise their hands and by bringing students up to the smart board and have them explore composition. This was not planned, but a great opportunity provided by the students. This is something I have learned to accept as a future teacher.
You cannot always plan every minute and sometimes the minutes you don't plan are the best methods of teaching. Especially as a new teacher if something is not working you have to accept it and move on. Adaptation and flexibility is necessary.
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