I will be tutoring at North Marion High School in a 9th grade English classroom. Throughout the course of the semester, I would like to learn a lot more about lesson planning and the creation of IEP's. During my last semester my host teacher asked me what CSO my lesson met, however, because we have yet to discuss CSO's I had no idea. Also, I would like to learn more about age-appropriate teaching methods. For example, I do not want to go into a classroom and teach in a way that the students feel is too adolescent for them or too advanced. In previous courses we have learned a lot of psychological theories about teaching, however, most of the time those are easier said than done. I would like to see some real life examples of how teachers implement effective teaching style and classroom management. I am actually somewhat nervous for the coming semester. Facing 19 hours and tutoring once a week will be quite difficult, especially with a focus in English. However, I hope that the assignments and presentations prove to be helpful in improving our teaching effectiveness. I also hope that after each assignment I can reflect and truly gain knowledge from my experiences that will be helpful in my future career as an educator.
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Now that I have been in my PDS a few times (very few, considering all of the snow :D ) I am more comfortable in my situation and not as nervous about the semester. I really enjoy working with my host teacher and she is super helpful when it comes to creating a lesson/tutor activity. I have noticed ways in which she makes the material age-appropriate and interesting for her students and I plan on using these strategies when creating lessons for my own classroom in the future.
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A question for my peers: How do you incorporate the various instruction methods, which we have learned about in our Education courses, into your PDS classroom? Also, how do you make the lessons relevant to the students' lives?
Megan, I too have been trying to figure out how to incorporate different teaching strategies into the classroom. I've tried to use a couple of the basic ideas we learned in EDUC 300, like positive reinforcement. Whenever a student answers a question I try to be encouraging so they will respond to more questions. I also try to ask questions to each student throughout the course of the lesson. Doing so allows everyone to participate and also gives me an idea on how each student is doing.
ReplyDeleteI've found it challenging to try and connect some material to student's lives. Luckily with history, I can find ways. For example we did a lesson about Presidents Washington and Lincoln. We went over that Barack Obama is the current President, and then described how his time is different than that of Washington or Lincoln. It was a bit of a stretch, but at least it was able to link the present to the past for students to see.
Megan,
ReplyDeleteI completely understand what you mean by being nervous about completing so many credit hours as well as being at your PDS for two hours. I am sure that as the semester progresses, you will be able to handle the time and the tasks will seem less overwhelming. One way I have found to make lessons relevant to students' lives is to link the lessons to something going on in the world or even in pop culture. For example, I designed a lesson discussing the types of irony that can be found in literature which involved an analysis of the Alanis Morisette song, "Ironic". In this song, there were numerous lines that contained irony, and provided many real-life examples. Activities like this help motivate students because they are able to make connectiions to their own lives.