I had a chat with my mentor this morning about how the two lessons went the day before. I went through the things I thought worked and did not work and how I felt I had struggled with one class more and another.
He was very very encouraging. He said that as I get more comfortable in the classroom I will start to work out my own ways on how best to deal with particular classes. He encouraged me to express my expectations to the class before I take a lesson - things like:
- When I am talking you are not
- When we are having a class discussion, it is polite to listen to your classmates when they are talking instead of having a conversation in another group about something that is not related
Rules of sorts. He said there was nothing wrong with that, and it would be a good idea to start building up a bank of ideas for expectations which I will be able to share. I really respect him as a teacher, he teaches so well and it seems to be so natural to him. I expressed that, and he encouraged me to have my own style. I left his office feeling a whole lot better.
In the afternoon, that teacher which was absent yesterday was back but not feeling very well. He asked if I wanted to take his class and he would give me feedback. I will take any chance to teach to of course I took the offer with both hands! This was with 2 mins to go, and I did not get a chance to make more copies of the resources I had used with the previous classes! I made do! I did more group work with them where they shared the handouts and that actually worked really well.
He gave me some great feedback, all written out on 3 A4 pages!
- Title and date on the board
- Lesson objectives discussed
- Good starter activity with getting them to read quietly on their own and then to talk to their friend about what the definitions for the key concepts may be.
- Teacher vocab like "hands up", "read quietly", "can you expand on his/her answer", "pens down"
- Good use of language and terms - need to be careful to make sure I dont use language that is too difficult, need to remember to explain what words mean.
- Good resources - but I rushed through them. I spent 40mins making a resources but only spent 2 mins on it in the class.
- When I give the class 5 mins, I actually give them way less time to do it. I need to get a stop watch or keep looking at the clock to ensure I am giving them the amount of time I have said I would give them.
Overall it was a really positive experience and I am so so happy I got to teach another lesson.
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