Discoveries Through Planning and Teaching

          My Social Studies methods class recently completed several weeks of fieldwork in a 5th grade classroom. During this time, we were each responsible for teaching Social Studies lessons within our team teaching groups. We needed to complete a direct instruction lesson, an inquiry lesson, and a cooperative learning lesson. My group was fortunate enough to go last, so we had the opportunity to watch several groups go before us.

          Through this experience I learned the importance of planning. For our direct instruction lesson, my group spent a great deal of time designing and rehearsing it. Our time spent was reflected clearly in how well we delivered our lesson. For our inquiry and cooperative lessons, we did not spend nearly as much time, and it was evident while we were teaching. I felt less confident and more unsure about what we were going to be doing in our second lesson because of the lack of planning. Moving into the future, I will be sure to always allot an adequate amount of time to planning and rehearsing to each lesson I teach. I learned a lot about the students as we taught also. We planned for the best case scenario and sometimes that is not what happened. I learned that it is important to be flexible and work with the unique group of students that you have. Some lessons and activities may work well with a specific group of students, and with other groups it may not. We expected a lot of our 5th grade students and for the most part, they delivered. They were enthusiastic about each activity and gave a solid effort to each task. The retained a decent amount of information from one lesson to the other and volunteered answers readily. They participated fully in our lessons and activities. One area that I felt the students did not meet my expectations, was the social aspect of their group work. The students had a difficult time being positive and supportive of each other's ideas. Some students got let out of group work because louder more confident students took over the activity leaving little to no room for the quieter students to participate. In the future, I would like to be equipped with strategies to combat the negative group work atmosphere.

          I learned a lot about myself through this experience as well. The major critiques I have for myself are my volume level when I am speaking and my overall confidence standing in front of a class of thirty students. I think these two critiques go hand in hand. I feel that if I had more confidence, I may be louder when I am speaking. I think that confidence will come with experience. Just after the few weeks I spent with the 5th graders, I felt myself becoming more confident standing in front of a class. Being able to team teach was an interesting experience. I enjoyed working with my colleagues and I appreciated the ways in which we all contributed ideas to our lesson. I felt that the work was relatively evenly dispersed between the five of us. Everyone contributed and had an important role in presenting the lesson. One of the drawbacks for me was finding a time when everyone was free to work on the preparation. Everyone is busy, so finding a time when we could all meet and devote all of our attention to our planning proved to be difficult. Moving forward, I would be open to team teaching in the again.