Phew! The third teaching hour is complete. This lesson definitely had some highs and lows. This week in general has had highs and lows. This week has been the week of closing for two of my courses as a student. With that, there was an added level of pressure that pushed my attention away from teaching and back onto my role as a student. I think my concentration wasn’t at it’s best this week. In the future, I will have to find a way to give myself room in my mind to focus more on the teaching task at hand and take a step away from my student stress.
In my lesson this week, the timing was way off. We could only have time for our first activity and our error correction. We had planned for three activities in conjunction with an error correction and closing remarks. Clearly, we didn’t reach this. However, the lesson actually went pretty well. It was the first lesson we really tried to make a student-centred lesson, like I mentioned last week. It took some time for the students to feel out their role, but by the end we had more engagement than usual, even from our quiet students. My partner teacher and I need to learn our new roles as well as a background facilitator. As a naturally very quiet person I might be too quiet during this time, not giving enough assistance to my students. With my camera off and trying not to overtake the lesson, the students may have felt a bit stranded. I will really have to work on this, and learn what my role really is in this area.
Next week the students will be in their roles again, and I hope with more exposure and practice in these roles the students will gain more confidence and comfort in the classroom.
