Taking Over The Class

                              

       Starting the 16th of this month I took control of the class to begin teaching my three week lesson over The Odyssey. Leading up to the lesson the students were excited to have me take over the class asking a plethora of questions the following week. This gave me great encouragement that they would be as respectable as they had been the previous weeks with my CT. However, the first day of my teaching I found out this wood not be the case and had to re-establish control over the class. Students were quick to get off task, talking became a huge issue, and questions not relating to the assignment in an attempt to side track the lesson became abundant.
    
     During the first lesson once I realized I was starting to lose control of the classroom I stopped my lesson and started watching the clock. When I stopped this garnered a great deal of student attention with them asking me what I was doing. Once I told them I was waiting for them to quiet back down and focus with the intent of holding them after class for every second of my time they wasted class came quickly back on track for the rest of the day.  For the rest of the week this strategy helped to keep the class focused and on task. Also my CT suggested we start awarding achieve points for students being on task without excessive talking if they follow these simple rules they gain 10 additional points for the period.

    Coming into the lesson I had high expectations and was excited to have full control of the classroom for such and extended period of time. Knowing everyone has their own teaching style there have been many times when I have watched an instructor teach a lesson and think I would have really like it if such and such was done differently and this finally presented the opportunity for me to do just that. What I didn't realize was the struggle to come up with lesson that would keep the students engaged and excited one assignment that I thought would be most enjoyable (a short comic strip) bombed with most students who didn't wish to draw, while another assignment I thought they might not enjoy as much (writing a 1 page paper from a different character point of view) they loved and asked to be able to write more than 1 page.

   This has been a great experience seeing how difficult it can be to budget time, keep students engaged, and vary the lesson from day to day has been more challenging than I anticipated. I remember when I first started planning thinking how am I going to fill an hour and a half everyday without becoming mundane and now I wish classes were 2 hours long as time seems to go extremely quickly while teaching.


     So far I have received a great deal of positive feedback over my lessons with my CT offering comments after each class. Wednesday the Vice Principal came in while I was teaching and told me it seemed to be going really well when I was leaving the building and Friday there was a sub who said I appeared to be a natural teacher. With this constant encouragement it feels good to know that I am not completely bombing and letting my students down.