This week was the sixth hour of teaching, over half way through now! I am still exhausted after the one hour lesson and have a hard time paying attention for my class that follows the teaching hour. It’s difficult to switch from being a teacher to a student in an hour. This week I think my teaching took a step back. For the first time in probably my life I was told I talked too much, and I could see myself doing it but couldn’t really stop. Normally I’m one thats not opposed to silence but this week it really bothered me. Next week I’ll have to really monitor this and make sure I’m not developing a new habit of speaking too much. I doubt it will, but better to be safe than sorry.
Along with this new talking issue, this week the biggest things I would like to change are tweaks to the lesson plan and actual activities. It didn’t really play out how I envisioned when making the activities. This is pretty much the first time it happened. Maybe it’s because we added more teacher focused activities, rather than a big open discussion so there is more room for students to react not how I expected them to for the activity. However, really it is experience and gives me the opportunity to grow in the flexibility department in my teaching. With the teacher focused activities, the lower students spoke more which was the goal of the activity so I’m really happy about that and will probably continue this format.
In the teacher focused activity, it seemed kind of like a was game or maybe some competition to the students and I wonder if that increased their engagement. When I told them they found more than I ever did when I found the activity, they laughed and seemed to like that they did better than me. As discussed in class last week, games have a great place in the lesson. I’m curious how they would react with an actual game. I think including a real game would be even more fun for them and I would really like to try it, hopefully next week.
