Today I had my second lesson. Which I think went pretty well.
It’s almost deflating, you spend hours preparing the class and then you run on adrenaline until it’s over. After the lesson I am left feeling a little hollow, and uneasy. I think this feeling comes from the fact that I am a bit of a perfectionist. The lesson went well, really well BUT it wasn’t perfect. My tutors, friends and family remind me that it’s not meant to be perfect. The point of teaching practicum is to learn and gain experience. The point is to make mistakes so that you don’t make them again.
So how did I do? Here we go for some self-evaluation.
Yesterday was my first lesson with my year eights. It’s a class of 20 students (which feels big enough). They are only just learning French, and they all have varying abilities. The first class was challenging. Mostly because it was my first time, not because I had anything particularly challenging happen. I had planned to do a little 'about me' exercise. I gave the girls a handout which introduced myself, told them where I was from and what I studied. I made one in English and one in French. Then I asked them to write an email which introduced themselves. This was a little challenging for them as they were encountering phrases they had never learnt before. Although, some of the girls figured out, rather quickly, that all you had to do was essentially copy the phrases and fill in the gaps. Most of the girls worked solidly on this task. I encountered my first problem. Some girls finished really quickly. When I realised how quickly they worked I was left with this horrible sinking feeling in my stomach. I didn’t have any other work planned. Luckily, I came up with an idea on the spot. We’ve been studying clothing and colours, so I asked students to look up their favourite fashion label online and find their favourite ‘look’, then write me a description of the model and explain what she was wearing. This seemed to work well. But I was really worried for a moment. What would I do if there was still 20 minutes left of the lesson? I didn’t want my first lesson to go badly because that would set the tone for weeks to come.
I was also well organised with my board work, I went in a few minutes early to write everything up. It was good to be organised but my actual board writing needs some work. I don’t actually like writing on the board because I don’t like having my back to the class. Being organised helped settle my nerves. Although, in saying this I could feel the blood rushing to my cheeks and settling there for the entire 50 minutes.
Today I had year 10s and they are a really lovely group of girls. I was nervous, and tired. I stayed up until 1:30 am preparing. I arrived at school at 7:45 to get a head start. Of course when I went to turn on my laptop it wouldn’t work. Talk about PANIC. So I rushed over to the IT office only to find no one there yet. Rushed back to my desk and found Jin’s laptop on our desk (she’s another student from Adelaide Uni). I borrowed it to complete my printing and to check over a few grammar points. I was frazzled. However, I got through the lesson.
Nelly stresses the importance of higher-order thinking tasks and making students come to the answer independently rather than have the teacher talk at the students. In light of this I started with an engager task. Students were given a list of idiomatic expressions in French along with their English counterparts, these were printed on slips of paper that could be easily moved around. They had to match the phrases together. This seemed to engage to students and helped reinforce the phrases and vocab.
We looked over useful vocab and played a form of ‘Guess Who?’ where students used fashion ‘lookbooks’ to guess which model their partner was looking at. This worked really well. The girls responded really positively to this activity. I need to write more key phrases on the board to scaffold the girls learning. I also need to work on my time management. For example knowing when to wrap up lessons. I know that this will come with practice. Now I’m planning some assessment pieces and writing some rubrics. I’m tired and could do with a day off. Last week was full on; I had school every day, two staff meetings on Tuesday (one at school and then one at my work), work on Friday night after school, and the South Australian French Teachers’ Association on Saturday from 9-4. I feel like I haven’t stopped. Anyway enough complaining from me. I’m learning so much and I’ve only been here a week. It’s really fantastic.
It’s almost deflating, you spend hours preparing the class and then you run on adrenaline until it’s over. After the lesson I am left feeling a little hollow, and uneasy. I think this feeling comes from the fact that I am a bit of a perfectionist. The lesson went well, really well BUT it wasn’t perfect. My tutors, friends and family remind me that it’s not meant to be perfect. The point of teaching practicum is to learn and gain experience. The point is to make mistakes so that you don’t make them again.
So how did I do? Here we go for some self-evaluation.
Yesterday was my first lesson with my year eights. It’s a class of 20 students (which feels big enough). They are only just learning French, and they all have varying abilities. The first class was challenging. Mostly because it was my first time, not because I had anything particularly challenging happen. I had planned to do a little 'about me' exercise. I gave the girls a handout which introduced myself, told them where I was from and what I studied. I made one in English and one in French. Then I asked them to write an email which introduced themselves. This was a little challenging for them as they were encountering phrases they had never learnt before. Although, some of the girls figured out, rather quickly, that all you had to do was essentially copy the phrases and fill in the gaps. Most of the girls worked solidly on this task. I encountered my first problem. Some girls finished really quickly. When I realised how quickly they worked I was left with this horrible sinking feeling in my stomach. I didn’t have any other work planned. Luckily, I came up with an idea on the spot. We’ve been studying clothing and colours, so I asked students to look up their favourite fashion label online and find their favourite ‘look’, then write me a description of the model and explain what she was wearing. This seemed to work well. But I was really worried for a moment. What would I do if there was still 20 minutes left of the lesson? I didn’t want my first lesson to go badly because that would set the tone for weeks to come.
I was also well organised with my board work, I went in a few minutes early to write everything up. It was good to be organised but my actual board writing needs some work. I don’t actually like writing on the board because I don’t like having my back to the class. Being organised helped settle my nerves. Although, in saying this I could feel the blood rushing to my cheeks and settling there for the entire 50 minutes.
Today I had year 10s and they are a really lovely group of girls. I was nervous, and tired. I stayed up until 1:30 am preparing. I arrived at school at 7:45 to get a head start. Of course when I went to turn on my laptop it wouldn’t work. Talk about PANIC. So I rushed over to the IT office only to find no one there yet. Rushed back to my desk and found Jin’s laptop on our desk (she’s another student from Adelaide Uni). I borrowed it to complete my printing and to check over a few grammar points. I was frazzled. However, I got through the lesson.
Nelly stresses the importance of higher-order thinking tasks and making students come to the answer independently rather than have the teacher talk at the students. In light of this I started with an engager task. Students were given a list of idiomatic expressions in French along with their English counterparts, these were printed on slips of paper that could be easily moved around. They had to match the phrases together. This seemed to engage to students and helped reinforce the phrases and vocab.
We looked over useful vocab and played a form of ‘Guess Who?’ where students used fashion ‘lookbooks’ to guess which model their partner was looking at. This worked really well. The girls responded really positively to this activity. I need to write more key phrases on the board to scaffold the girls learning. I also need to work on my time management. For example knowing when to wrap up lessons. I know that this will come with practice. Now I’m planning some assessment pieces and writing some rubrics. I’m tired and could do with a day off. Last week was full on; I had school every day, two staff meetings on Tuesday (one at school and then one at my work), work on Friday night after school, and the South Australian French Teachers’ Association on Saturday from 9-4. I feel like I haven’t stopped. Anyway enough complaining from me. I’m learning so much and I’ve only been here a week. It’s really fantastic.