Designing My Own First Day
Hi everyone! I know what you're all probably thinking, "Why is Mckenzie talking about the first day of school when she's already in week four?". Well, that's because the first day is SUPER important in setting up your students and classroom for success. It is the first chance for you to set expectations and procedures in your classroom and for students to get a true sense of who you are as a teacher. As a preservice educator, it is very important to consider what I will do on the first day of class so that I get off on the right foot.
Lucky for me, this week in 412, we had the opportunity to create a lesson plan for what we would do on our first day of school and deliver 10 minutes worth of content from that plan in front of a group of our peers. I chose to create my first day lesson for the 9th grade ag sciences course that I will be teaching this spring. Follow along with this lab and I will take your through some of the post-lab reflections I had!
Making Lab the "Real Deal"
One of the most difficult things for me to wrap my head around was the fact that when we are teaching in lab, it is meant to be the real deal. I had a hard time deciding what part of my lesson plan I wanted to demonstrate during class and wanted to jump around throughout my lesson in order to get to the parts that I really wanted feedback on. However, that's obviously not how teaching works and I am not getting real, honest feedback on my teaching if I am not acting exactly how I would within a classroom.
In the future, I need to remind myself that I will only get real, honest feedback on my teaching if I am providing an authentic teaching experience.
Who's Talking the Most?
Another area I needed to reflect on in my teaching from today was how much I was talking and how little space I gave for students to provide their voice, choice, and agency in the classroom. I feel as though this primarily comes from what I have personally experienced in classes on the first day. A large portion of the educators that I have experienced start the first day by doing a small (usually cheesy) ice breaker and then hop right into laying out expectations and procedures for the year.
I did try to provide some differentiation in my first day by allowing the students to complete a bingo card that students would fill out as we move throughout our expectations and procedures. After running through my lesson plan today, I realize that this is not enough variability in my instruction. I should have came up with some sort of activity to get students out of their chairs, moving, and also giving them some opportunity to voice their opinions.
I realize that this is where I probably need the most growth at the current moment, however, I feel confident that the coaching, resources, and instruction that I receive throughout the rest of my time at Penn State will do a great job of helping me improve. I hope that you all visit this blog again in future posts to see the growth that I make in this area.
Making Measurable Learning Objectives
Another area that I found particularly difficult in the lesson plans that I have made so far is making my lesson and unit plans measurable. This is something that I have touched on in past blog posts, and I am almost 1,000% sure that it will come up in future blog posts as well. This is actually the exact topic that we will be covering during lecture next week in 412 and I am really excited to learn about how I can continue to grow in this area!
Overall, I am very thankful that I was able to go through this 1st Day lab and work out some of the "bugs" that educators usually don't get to work out until their first day of their first year of teaching. I really think that I could go on and on about areas for improvement, after all, nothing is ever perfect. I am very excited to gain more knowledge and experience on how I can be an effective educator and provide the best learning experiences for my students.
That's all for now and I hope you will circle back to my blog next week to hear about my journey through interest approaches! :)
Mckenzie, I think that you brought up a point that we all struggle with, which is "Who Talks the Most" . As Teachers, We are trying to teach students, and the best way that we know how to do that is to lecture at them. I think this will get easier, with experience and as we get more tools into our pocket, to allow for students to be more involved in the learning. As we are still students in classes, we can understand the difference a course makes, when we are physically involved or just being lectured at. I think that I can agree with you, that I thought I had enough variability in my lesson with the Spot it Game, and realized that is not nearly enough! I hope that this something that we can work together as a cohort and pass ideas back and forth to eachother!
ReplyDeleteThank you for bring up some great points that I think all of us can learn from! In the lab, I really enjoyed the idea of the Bingo activity to help students grasp the rules and regulations! This idea showed your attention to bringing variability into your classroom along with stepping out of the "1st Day" norms that happen in every class with constant lectures. However, I know from experience that it is also hard to create activities that are essential for content comprehension that help keep students engaged by getting out of their seats more often. Students cannot stay seated and engaged for more than 10 minutes! Something that I am trying to focus on as I think about variability in my lesson plans as well.
ReplyDeleteIn addition, I also connected to your reflection with learning objectives. Going through labs and creating these unit and lesson plans, I realized that I still need practice in understanding what learning objectives should entail. Something that I took away from lab yesterday was that learning objectives will look different in your lesson plan than they do when you present them to the students. They need action words, too. As for making objectives measurable, I like to think about two questions: "When do I need students to complete or accomplish this goal?" and "How much content do I expect the students to retain and utilize out of each lesson?". Hopefully, these questions can help you out! Again, this will take practice for all of us, but I am intrigued to see how next week in AEE 412 will help us to work on creating better learning objectives. Can't wait to hear more from you in labs and reflection time!
Hi Mckenzie, thank you for sharing your thoughts here on the First Day lab teaching experience! I resonate with so much of what you have said here related to the challenges of navigating our first authentic teaching experience in lab. I appreciated the wisdom you shared when you wrote about the need to start things off well from the very first day by setting clear expectations while also engaging students and keeping their interest. This is not an easy balance to strike! I relate to the struggle of integrating differentiation into my lesson plans and maintaining an appropriate level of variability while also being productive and efficient to accomplish much within the class periods I teach. Although we still have much to learn, I appreciate your perspective and have learned so much from your example already!
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