Talk about a nerve racking 25 minutes... standing in front of a classroom full of future educators and teaching a lesson I had been preparing for weeks. However, it also showed me how much I've grown already. As I taught today my thoughts were "Do the understand what I'm explaining?", "How can I check to make sure?" , "Am I helping them internalize it rather than memorize it?". All of these questions ran through my mind even though I knew my classmates know how to round to the nearest ten, I wanted to ensure I was acting as if they were 3rd graders.
One thing I know I must work on after today is handling distractions during the lesson. Students can come up with the most creative questions that will test my method of explaining to the max. However, I want to be sure to answer the on topic questions to the best of my ability that encourages the most growth. I also to work on redirecting classroom focus when some of the off-topic questions are thrown my way. The focus of an elementary school student is like a needle in hay stack once you lose it it is very hard to find it again.
Teaching my first lesson was a very valuable experience no matter how nervous I was. Improvising is key because as we have previously talked about lesson plans are for the ideal classroom. Ideal classrooms rarely happen so I must still be able to encourage learning and growth!
