Fieldwork Reflection

          

          This semester, I completed my fieldwork in a 5th grade classroom in Bishop Dunn Memorial School. I co-taught with 4 of my colleagues. We were responsible for designing and teaching three lessons on the exploration and foundation of the original 13 English colonies. We had to design a direct instruction lesson, and inquiry lesson, and a cooperative learning lesson.

          This fieldwork was a first for me as I had never co-taught with anyone, and I had never taught a whole class lesson. In all of my previous fieldwork placements, I designed lessons and worked one-on-one with a student. This experience gave me the opportunity to practice skills that would be more realistic in my future teaching career. It is great to work with a student one-on-one, but that is not realistic for my future career. I had to learn to work with my colleagues this semester. We had to work productively together to design and implement our lessons. This was easier said than done.

          We all approached designing lessons with our own unique teaching style and our own ideas. It was difficult, at first, to find something that we all agreed on. However, when we did, we were able to create some really engaging lessons. Designing lessons was definitely the most difficult part because we had to combine so many ideas into one lesson. The most time consuming part of the lesson designing process was actually making the PowerPoint presentations. We wanted to make sure our slides were engaging and detailed, so we took a good deal of time designing each one.

Overall, I think we did a great job designing and teaching our lessons. We overcame disagreements in a mature and respectful way. Our lessons ran smoothly in the classroom and the students seemed to enjoy them. This fieldwork experience was a very positive one.