Teaching

This week, my partner and I were able to teach all by ourselves. At the beginning of our field experience our cooperating teacher asked us if we wanted to get more experience teaching and, of course, we said yes. The students mornings are pretty similar from day to day so it was easy to get the hang of how to teach. We taught new vocal and cite words. We were able to try out different classroom management techniques also. We pulled sticks, used classroom dojo (an online teacher resource,) and used the phrases listed below.

Teacher: "One, two." Students: "Eyes on you."
Teacher: "eyes on..." Students: "you" Teacher: "Hands at our..." Students: "Sides" Teacher: "Bubbles in our..." Students: "Mouths."

We found out quickly how hard it is to keep an entire classroom full of children to pay attention! They often had their eyes wandering around the room, their arms in their shirts (not in their sleeves,) and swinging their heads back and forth. One thing that worked for us was classroom dojo. We were able to give students who were paying attention and had their eyes on the board points, while the students who were being distracting either didn't get points or had them taken away.
It was a really wonderful experience being able to teach on our own and having our cooperating teacher their with us in case we needed help. I hope everyone gets to experience something like this before student teaching!