Teaching a LifeKnowledge Lesson at Biglerville

Last week, I was fortunate enough to teach my first official lesson at Biglerville! It was a LifeKnowledge lesson, adapted from the Educator Resources Section from the National FFA Website. For this lesson, I chose to teach the lesson on S.M.A.R.T. goals to a class of 12 9th graders. Overall, this lesson went really well, however, from these 48 minutes alone, I learned so many things. In this blog post, I will be sharing the main takeaways that I gained from teaching this LifeKnowledge lesson. 

Always remember the power of close proximity. 

    One things that I really struggled with during my LifeKnowledge lesson was that, when students were working in groups, they would often get off task if I was not right next to them. Obviously, it is nearly impossible to be beside every group of students all the time. However, I did notice that many of the issues I was seeing significantly decreased if I was consistently staying within close proximity of each of the groups. In the future, I will keep in mind that as I am creating groups and having them split out within the room, I should try to strategically place the groups so that I can remain in close proximity to each of them easier.  

Build relationships with your students. 

    Another issue that I noticed while teaching my LifeKnowledge lesson was that it was difficult to increase student engagement when I didn't know many of my students names. This also made it hard for classroom management because I could not talk to students directly to ask them to do something. Obviously, this is something that will improve the longer that I am at the school. However, it is good to keep this concept in mind as I am picking up new classes throughout my student teaching experience, but also as I am gaining a classroom of my own. 

Overall, my LifeKnowledge lesson was a great way for me to gain some real teaching experience and get a feel for what it would be like to teach at Biglerville in the spring. I am very excited to use the information that I have gained from this experience and apply it during my student teaching experience. Stay tuned to see how my teaching evolves over the next few months!