As I am reaching the end of Spring Semester, I can feel all the deadlines nipping at my heels! I will say that the most impactful thing I have learned in Social Studies Methods this Spring is how to manage my time wisely (and I am still definitely learning). We are absolutely on the home-stretch and I can see the finish line. BUT we still have lots to accomplish before we cross it. Through my clinical experiences this week, I began to notice that I am learning how to interact with my students in a much more meaningful way. Also, I am very excited to teach my Social Studies lesson to my students very soon!
Flipped lessons are strange. They are awesome and impactful for students, but they are completely unlike anything I have ever done before! I love the idea of them and I think I will love them as a form of teaching once I get used to recording myself teaching and explaining things to a computer screen. The actual written part of the lesson was not extremely difficult for me (though it was still far from easy), but recording myself teaching the lesson is well beyond my comfort zone. This has been my largest challenge yet. I believe that in order to demonstrate leadership in my classroom, as a teacher should, I must be confident in my teaching. By pushing me out of my comfort zone, this assignment appears to be developing me into a leader for my future students.
In one of my classrooms at WES, Gabrielle and I discussed how great it was that we were getting to know the kids' names without peeping through their hands at their papers or using the famous "Now would you spell your name for me" line to figure out what it is. The students are also beginning to tell us apart (which may not seem like a big deal, but Ms. Lindley and Ms. Lowman are apparently VERY hard to tell apart). These connections that I have made with the students in the classroom have given me the ability to really offer them help in areas they need. The students are beginning to trust me enough to ask for help and to admit when they don't quite understand something. Teaching is SO relational and those relationships we make with our students are crucial to their learning!
Grace, I agree these deadlines are fast approaching as the semester comes to a close! The flipped lesson plan was very strange, I typically like to include a lot of conversation when I teach so this was a bit weird for me also! I'm glad you are starting to make some personal connections with the students at WES and see how that benefits their learning. Those relationships truly are crucial!
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ReplyDeleteI couldn't agree more with you about the flipped lesson plans! It is so weird to reteach our brains to think about planning differently and teach a lesson in a new way! I hope this is something I can do in my future classroom too, as you mentioned because I do believe it is good to change things up for the students. I do worry that it wouldn't be effective because I know it is very hard to think that my students now would really watch a lesson at home and be prepared for class the next day. Unless you had awesome support from your parents, this would be hard to do in a lower grade classroom. I feel that some students would come to school and not be prepared at all and having to go back and reteach would defeat the purpose and not be fair to the students who were prepared and understood the content. It is crazy to think we are close to the end though! Keep pushing through and we will make it!
Caroline
Grace, I am glad to see that you have already noticed how important time management is...I know you don't want to hear this...but...time management becomes even more of an issue in student teaching! Thank you for making all of your clinical experiences beneficial for you (and the students) this semester. Linking theory to practice is one of the best ways to increase your effectiveness as a teacher to the max.
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