While teaching my engineering
lesson at Brigham I was able to further make strides in reaching my goals for
this semester. I was so impressed to see
what they students knew versus what they could show that they learned at the
end of the lesson. The students that we
worked with were extremely bright! There
were a few times that they answered questions with incorrect answers but this
may have been a result of our instruction not being the clearest it could be. I was able to make connections with all of the
students in the group. We taught about
why wheels should be round for cars and how this helps them go. We also discussed some other shapes that
would not work as wheels such as a triangle or a square. We watched a video
that showed a car with square wheels and when we asked if the car worked very
well most students said no because it was too bumpy. There was one student who
seemed to be testing us because he said he would like square wheels on a car
because it would be fun to be in this kind of car.
I think that this is an example of
our instruction maybe being confusing for the students. In the video the car
was able to drive a good distance to this may have confused them. We worked together during the lesson, teachers
and students, and by the end I could see that the students really did
understand what was being taught. As
co-teachers I could feel that we were all trying our best to communicate with
these students to help them understand the concepts being addressed. Through out the lesson there were several
different times when a student seems confused or was paying attention to
something other than our lesson plan. We
were all able to work together as a team to keep the students engaged and bring
them back on track if they seemed lost at any point.
I would say that this visit at
Brigham was my most successful. When comparing my first visit to the rooms to
this last time I can see big changes in myself.
I feel much more confident when trying to communicate with students
whose first language is not English as well as my ability to co-teach with
others who might have different ideas than myself. I feel as thought through out my experiences
at Brigham I was able to pick up many different classroom set up ideas to help
engage ELL students as well as different ways to incorporate diversity into
each and every one of my lesson plans. I am very excited to take what I have
learned this semester and apply it to my PDS site next semester. Although my
classroom is not diverse I feel that most, if not all, of the communication strategies
that I have learned this semester will help me build relationships with all of
my students. I also believe that the accommodations and differentiations that I
have used this semester will be helpful as well.
Exceeds: Related to my clinical setting and exceeded word count.
