Alisha Janicek's Reflection Paper from Educ 326 Science
Methods Spring 2007
Teaching this year at St. Mary's Catholic School has been a great experience. The first time being introduced to Mrs. Hawes our cooperating teacher I felt like it would be a good experience. The students seemed excited we were there and eager to learn. I had never team taught before so I was unsure of what the experience was going to be like.
Trisha and I planned many fun and educational experiences for the students while teaching them a unit on rocks and magnets. At first we were stuck on the subject but we did our homework and learned a few new things ourselves. Our first day went very well. We took time to tell the students a little bit about ourselves and learned some things about them. They were all very attentive and well-behaved.
I have learned that preparing all these lessons was a lot of work. There is so much preparation and material to keep track of. Trisha and I had to gather material than practice the lesson together first with the experiments to make sure they work. Then go to the class and set everything up and teach the lesson. You cannot just wake up and walk into the classroom with no material and wing it because more than likely it will not turn out very well. Trisha and I were very fair with breaking the work load up. We would divide the lessons and take turns on who would lead the lesson. Team teaching is a great thing and I feel it should be incorporated more in schools. While one teacher leads the other can assist the students and vice versa. While teaching Trisha and I also had to make sure not to over step each other while teaching a lesson. Just to make sure she or I would not repeat the same information during the unit. It can become repetitive and student may get lost if we are both going back and forth with information.
Behavior management was a topic Trisha and I struggled with a bit. Behavior management takes experience and can be hard when you have a different philosophy of it. In the beginning Mrs. Hawes explained to us they had manner charts and that we could take away stickers of they were misbehaving. We never used to manner charts. Personally I felt the students were so well behaved. They were a bit chatty sometimes during our activities but I felt what 1st grader isn't. I am a disciplinarian in the classroom when I feel it is absolutely necessary but I have also not experiences too much yet so that could defiantly change. During our lessons Mrs. Hawes would discipline which was distracting at times. Close to the end of our teaching experience Trisha and I tried harder with the behavior management. It was a struggle not only disciplining but time management. When you are preparing the lesson use are assuming each activity will take a certain amount of time but once your teaching it you never get as far as you would like because it always takes longer especially with first graders. You really have to be detailed with directions, and speak slowly.
Mrs. Hawes was a huge help during our experiences. She gave us endless books and worksheets on the subjects we covered. She was always eager to help with the lesson and willing to give is feedback or suggestions. During this experience I have learned a lot more about the whole teaching experience. During teaching I have realized even more how much I love to teach. The comments of the students, the different personalities, and the new information I learn while teaching are irreplaceable. Trisha was a great partner and we bounced a lot of good ideas of each other that we were able to use. My time at St. Mary's was a wonderful experience that I will take with me in the rest of my journey.
Leane Snyder's Science Method Reflection Paper
I believe that I developed greatly as a teacher during the past several weeks. There were many new aspects of teaching that I encountered while working with this particular class. I had previously only worked with students in grades K-3, and had never had the chance to interact with 5th graders on a regular basis. Not only that, but the class I taught this semester was an enrichment class, and the students were all very intelligent. This forced Amy and I to stretch ourselves and develop lessons that would challenge the students.
This was the first time I had developed an assessment plan to use with the students I was teaching or observing. I actually found the process to be really fun. I liked deciding how many points each lesson should be worth, and I also enjoyed grading the students work and marking it down on our grading sheet. I don't know why this is, but it was something I always looked forward to.
Amy was a great person to work with. Because we have been friends for so long and have shared our ideas about education for three years, it was easy for us to come together and plan lessons. I found it very helpful and comforting to have someone to stand up in the front of the classroom with me. It also helped knowing that someone else would be there to help me manage seventeen very rambunctious students. We each brought great ideas to our lessons, and planning them together was an enjoyable experience as well.
A big thing I learned while working with my class was it is very difficult to create a unit and relate every activity you do to an overarching theme or idea. After each lesson, whether it was about plants and their environments, or Antarctica as an environment, or water pollution, Amy and I had to bring the class back together and relate our lesson to the main topic of environments. I found it very challenging to get the students to understand why we were doing certain activities; it was like they never really got the point of what we were doing.
During our final lesson, the students created a final project which had to somehow educate others about environments. Most of them chose to focus on global warming or pollution, which was only one part of the entire unit. I wish there was a way we could have summed up the entire unit so that the students could see how all of the activities we did connect, but we weren't able to do that. I just want to make sure that what I am doing as a teacher is benefiting the students, and that they are actually learning. Although I think they learned some from our unit, I don't know that they learned all that we wanted them to.
Teaching science over the past several weeks has greatly contributed to my skills as a teacher. I had the opportunity to work on my behavior management skills every time I was in the classroom. I also recalled the importance of planning lessons thoroughly. I felt at times that my lessons were not as well thought out as they could have been. Although they were easier to write than other formats I have had to use in the past, they left more room for error on my part. I think when I first start out in the classroom, it will be important for me to write more detailed lesson plans. Then as I get used to teaching, I can write simpler ones.
Overall, teaching science was a great experience for me. I had the chance to develop and teach an entire unit, which, if you think about it, is very exciting. I also had the opportunity to assess students and I really started paying attention to what they are learning and what I can do as a teacher to make sure that they are getting the most they can out of the material.