This week I had the opportunity to teach an English Language Arts lesson to a small group of first graders and amazing is an understatement to describe the experience. I was actually very confident about the lesson due to the ample amount of support I received my collaborating teacher and the assurance from my supervisor. I believe that my CT and I were matched perfectly. Although I did not see myself teaching first grade, she is constantly teaching me the ins and outs of managing a classroom full of six and seven year old students and how she instructional places and paces the class with students who are at different levels. The lesson was centered on the short vowel sounds of a, e and o. I incorporated index cards, flashcards and dry erase boards and markers into the lesson to make the learning more interesting rather than having them listen to me talk the entire twenty minutes. I had no doubt that the students would behave during the lesson but I was surprised at how engaged, attentive and responsive which made teaching the lesson enjoyable. I believe that this may have been a result of it being a small group setting rather than the entire class. They did not have any time to get distracted or talk to someone since I was sitting directly in front of them. One particular moment that caught my attention was when one of my students couldn’t decide whether he thought the sound was “short a” or “long a”. I encouraged him to be confident in his answers and I feel as though that was such a critical moment within the lesson. Often times students are discouraged when they say the wrong answer aloud which may lead them to participate less during class and that is not the environment that I want to create in my future classroom. I want my students to know that this is a learning process, and yes there will be times that they will make a mistake but it will not dictate their capabilities. One thing that I could take away from the video was how I need to work on making eye contact with all of the students. I noticed that I did not look at the student to my left as much as the two that were sitting in front and on the right. The objective of the lesson was, “Given sample single-syllable words orally, the student will be able to identify short a, e and o sounds as well as spell words with those vowel sounds correctly.” Students grasped the concept of those vowel sounds based on their individual activity at the end that required them to create their own word family independently, without the help of another peer or myself. They were able to do this based on the repetition of reviewing the sounds in the beginning of the lesson as well as during the lesson as we viewed the picture cards. They were more than willing to create their own word families and did not want to only do one. I believe that a child’s excitement to do more as well as proficiency can determine whether they understood a lesson, which is what I witnessed toward the ending of the lesson. The formal observation taught me a few thing:
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AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
April 2017
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