First Day of School Lab Reflection

This week we completed our first teaching lab. This lab was titled First Day of School and whohoo, you guessed it, we focused on a first day of school lesson! For this assignment, we each developed lesson plans to cover an entire classroom session and then made a teaching presentation of about 10 minutes to demonstrate in lab.

For my teaching presentation, I decided to present the Expectations aspect of my lesson plan. For my expectations, I decided to involve my students and make it more of an activity rather than me telling them what they can and cannot do. I had my "students" break off into groups where they were tasked with making a giant list of classroom expectations. Students were then asked to share out their expectations along with reasoning as to why that expectation might be part of a class environment. Then as a group, we developed a much shorter list of 5 expectations which then could be displayed in the classroom for the remainder of the year.

This activity relates to what I know about teaching and learning in that I tried to highlight the positive impact of reflection in learning. By having students discuss expectations along with the reasoning behind them, I am allowing students to make connections between the expectation and why it is being used. Alternatively, if I had simply listed off expectations without reasoning my students likely wouldn't grasp an adequate understanding of the material. 

I think my biggest take away from this experience that I will be applying to my teaching arsenal is that I need to work on my clarity. Sometimes, I get excited about a lesson or activity and don't explain directions as clearly as I should. Looking ahead, I want to keep reminding myself to slow down and be sure everyone knows what's being asked of them. Additionally, it might be helpful for me to keep a notecard with key points I want to hit.