Teaching Response: Lesson Two (March 14, 2007)

I went into this lesson a lot calmer than the first one because I had a better idea of what to expect. In addition, when planning for this lesson our experience from the first lesson helped both Kristin and I tremendously. We had a better idea of what to expect from each class (both in behavior and academic ability). As a result we made certain considerations when teaching. For example, we knew that we would have to spend more time reviewing with the first class and also provide them with more support during activities. We also began to understand that we would have to constantly reinforce the reward system to keep control of the second class. Even after making these considerations we still walked out of the classroom feeling that we had a long list of things we needed to work on.

Similar to the first lesson, we ended up running out of time and not being able to complete the activities. We thought we had factored in more than enough time but we never realized how much the little things add-up. Getting the students seated, having them get their homework out, passing out name-tags, and reminding the students to quiet down all ate into the amount of instruction we had expected to give. As a result, Kristin and I are going to try to start making the lessons shorter and bring extra work for the students finish early. This way we will guarantee that we have time to go over all the material and if we have more time we will have something productive for the students to do.

After our lesson we asked Ms. A if she had any suggestions on how we could have cut down on time and gotten through the whole lesson. She mentioned that we need to consider the ability of the students’ cutting skills. Ms. A explained that today students are so used to filling in bubbles on SOL tests and therefore many of them have not mastered their cutting skills. In the lower grades they no longer have as many opportunities to work with creative assignments and as a result they suffer in other areas. Although I knew that the SOLs took away from many creative aspects of the classroom, it never occurred to me that something like scissor skills would suffer.