4 February 2009

The lesson that I did today I felt was a bit too unstructured. This lesson branched off of the previous lessons I had done with both the Element and Evolution teams. I find it hard many times to maintain good classroom management when the students have more freedom. It is always important to imagine that I am a student and I will be taught this lesson. I need to ask myself, if I would be able to understand this material presented in this particular format. In my lesson today, the students were to label and color out all the countries in Latin America. I had planned on just using an overhead transparency that the students could copy the names of the countries down from. It was too late when I realized that the font on this overhead transparency of a map of Latin America was too small. For about twenty minutes of my first period class students were up in the front of the classroom copying down names of countries. Almost every student had to get up out of their seat to clearly see the names of the countries. I could have planned this much better. Therefore for the next class I had decided to read each of the names of the countries on the overhead transparency and I saw a great improvement and less frustration on the students part, but this lesson still needed improvement, for many of the students were working on other parts of the map when I was reading off while showing the countries. In the third class I saw a much better improvement. I supplied books to the students where every two students looked on together and copied the names of the Latin American countries onto their own maps. I found that when each student had a book in front of them they were able to see everything clearly and further able to complete the assigned task. I have modified my lessons throughout the day because I know that there is room for improvement in my lessons. I constantly self-reflect and ask myself, “How could this lesson have gone smoother” I did this with the cognate lesson as well.

One of my biggest challenges is going to be classroom management. Maria constantly tells me that the students will test me and see how far they can go, and she is right. I have noticed that the students are sometimes more relaxed and feel that they cannot listen and not get in trouble. I am not scared to tell students to stop talking or to get back on task, but I do not want to send students out of my room. I need to find a system that I am comfortable with that promotes discipline, but also learning. I do not feel comfortable taking a student out of the classroom because I feel like I am taking their opportunity to learn away. I feel that there are more effective was that discipline can take place. I will experiment with different forms of discipline that promote learning as well as a respectful and safe classroom community.