Teaching has been swell. The students are enjoying my lessons and are responding well. I regularly use media, especially YouTube, to support my lessons and wrap up ideas with formative assessment (although I’m a bit behind with marking). They are picking up the material better than I expected and seem interested. Today, I taught them about bioaccumulation with an activity I learned during my Project Wild workshop in 2008. Here’s a lesson plan with construction paper instead of popsicle sticks.
Part of an effective class is good planning. Foresee your problems (i.e. have a whistle and lay down ground rules, boundaries), especially when your plan involves kids running around in a gym. Make sure they know the consequences (i.e if there’s too much chaos, they know that the activity ends and we all go back to the classroom).
To a teacher from the south, it looked like a regular class. To a teacher up north, that was a fantastic job, especially when you had half the class activity participating, giving answers and in the last ten minutes, they’re still writing.
These are the days I work for.
NOTE: I’m mainly using this blog to focus on my personal and financial goals, but have a second blog called Above the Forty-Ninth that I (inconsistently) post about my teaching experiences.
Stumbling Through My Thirties 