This was definitely an experience to remember! It felt great to be
leading a class, and it felt like it was where I belonged (hooray for choosing
the right major and career path!). There were a lot of parts to my lesson that I felt went
really well, and a few that could have been adjusted. I’ll just go down the
list to describe what I think.
As for Content and Preparation, I would rate myself as
good…but just not there yet. I knew where I was going with what I wanted to
present to the class but maybe there wasn’t enough time for high school
students to do what we asked of them. For example, in the peer reviews, I got
three “Strongs” and one “Developing” for my Content and Preparation aspect (My colleague,
Heather, and I split the feedback forms). The one “Developing” feedback was
referencing how little time we gave them to compare and contrast the poems. I
personally felt that five minutes would be enough time, since we were only
asking them to compare or contrast
(not both), and the spirituals were very short, but that could be because I am
in college and understand direction and how to work quickly. This could have
been improved, but seeing as how we only had thirty minutes to teach a whole
lesson, I feel pretty good about the Content and Preparation. Obviously I don’t
want my students to feel overwhelmed by the classwork I assign, though, and
will be more thoughtful in the future about how much time I give the students
to do something.
I am most proud about our Organization. There are no
negative or working critiques on the feedback forms and each one that I have
mentions how nicely everything flowed. It was really great to see that all the
hard work Heather and I put into our lesson paid off. I do think that we could
have scaffolded our lessons a little better so that our students would gave
more feedback during the lesson. In addition, I should have stated our LEQ more
clearly than just having it play on the PowerPoint. Overall though, I really
think our Organization was done well.
Delivery wasn’t too shabby either! We did say “um” a few
times but from what I could remember, and what I can tell from the peer reviews,
our volume and pronunciation was good and our eye contact was great. I did get
advice from one peer telling me I should not stand behind the computer because
no one was able to see me. In my defense though, I am only 5’1’’ and someone
had to be responsible for moving the PowerPoint along. If I could do things
differently with this, I would try to time the PowerPoint to play on its own,
or make sure that there is a clicker to the computer so I can stand in front of
the class.
I am really proud of the handouts and the opening
PowerPoint for the bell-ringer. I think it playing on a loop was a nice touch
and everyone agreed with that. The background information PowerPoint could have
been better though, maybe we should not have had full sentences on the board
like we did. And, I would definitely play one of the spirituals as they were
doing the bell-ringer if I could reteach this lesson. I received many comments
how it would have been cool to play one in the beginning and then a different
one at the end; they really loved hearing the spirituals being sung. I also got
a comment about how we should have had a PowerPoint slide with Frederick
Douglass’ speech on it so that all students would be able to read it instead of
just listening. This would have helped everyone immensely and I am disappointed
in myself for not thinking of this myself, since I have trouble listening
without reading too. So in general, I think our Visual/Multimedia/Learning
Styles was okay but there is room for improvement, for sure.
I think our students really enjoyed the lesson. Everyone
seemed to have a good time when we were talking about modern songs,
specifically when we discussed “Every Breath You Take” by the Police. In some
areas, like the directions we gave them, we could have been more specific so
that there would be less confusion. Overall though, I feel great about my first
teaching experience and am looking forward to many more in the future.
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