This week was a very eventful week in the world of student teaching. I taught my first two lessons. They were small, just a math group of three to four students. The first day was a bit of a last minute planned lesson. I tried to emulate what Keith does which is usually just to get out some manipulatives and work with multiplication facts. This strategy did not work well for me because I needed a bit more structure. It was also apparent that the questions I was asking of the students were not provoking good thinking. That afternoon Mr.Linington and I looked into what resources the math curriculum had that might be helpful. The next day when I taught math again I had prepared a lesson plan that aligned with what the students would be working on in math. I was able to change my questions and plan when the students were working at a faster pace than I expected. It was clear that good planning and good questions had made a significant difference. Friday was an excellent day! Mr. L and I have kind of been teaming up on the science each week and working together well. This week our planning time was shortened so we split up the responsibility of preparing for science. He got the vocabulary ready and I worked on building an example of the leg and thumb that the students would be building. We decided that when it came time for instruction he would go over the terms and principles and I would lead the construction aspects. Without directly planning for it, it became clear that we were team teaching the lesson. The students asked both of us questions and we transitioned well between each of us being at the head of the instruction. Friday’s are a good time for us to do this because we get to teach the same lesson twice. I think we both agreed that we would like to keep the team teaching model, or something similar going with our science lessons.
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