First Week of Fieldwork

The first week of fieldwork has finally begun!!

Excitement..Stress..Nerves..Anxiousness..Determination.. These are all words that accurately describe fieldwork with a 5th grade class!

I have never taught a lesson to an entire class before. I've only worked one-on-one with students but something about getting up in front of the whole class and teaching an actual lesson on something the kids will be tested on is a little nerve wracking. You have to make sure that every little detail is perfect in order for the lesson to go as planned and to succeed in teaching. Even though my group isn't the first to go, I got nervous thinking about Marie & Aimee going!

The day finally came..the class sat on the floor in the back of the room, on our laptops jotting down every note and observation we could. Every little idea, mistake, observation had to be noted so me and my group can improve. Just seeing the two of them up there..made me notice "Wow, that's going to be me in a week!!" But after they got into the groove of things, the lesson itself went very well. The class got loud at times and there was definitely some information missing in the direct instruction, but the information was explained beautifully and the students seemed really confident in answering all of the questions. The one thing I took note of was classroom management. For my group, we made sure to set aside time to explain the rules of the classroom to the students. They just think we're a bunch of college students just joking around with them; they don't take us seriously. We don't want to scare them but they need to know that this is serious and this information they're going to be learning is going to be on their tests sometime soon!

After observing the first day of fieldwork, it made me and my group really hit the gas and get moving on our lesson. Since we're teaching about Columbus, we were thinking of every fun and engaging activity we could imagine to keep the students engaged. Not only did we spend hours in the library together, we dedicated our own time to come up with ideas and get to work! It has been very time consuming and stressful, but once we teach it'll all be worth it!

We teach next week and me and my group definitely need to sit down and become confident in the material we are presenting to the class. We have to make sure we call on every student possible and DO NOT refer to the students as 'guys!' I'm excited to see how our lessons turn out, especially our Inquiry and Cooperative Learning. We are working on those at the moment so it is still a work in progress. Watching Marie and Aimee teach there's was a little confusing only because there was so strict powerpoint and direction. We definitely have to get moving, but we can't wait to start!!