My Fieldwork Teaching Experience

Before going into the after school science classroom, I already had in mind what to expect. I have had many opportunities and experiences with teaching students. I have done numerous one-on-one and small group teaching. However, my social studies methods course was the only course where I actually taught in front of a whole classroom with my peers. I remember being terrified at that time but I also remember enjoying myself, demonstrating my teaching skills, and learning a lot about teaching in the classroom. Now that I was going to teach in this science classroom, I felt the same nervous feeling but I knew that I would be able to teach the students effectively since I worked hard on the lessons and knew all the information by heart. Once I actually got in front of the classroom, I was confident and ready to teach the students information about the three types of rocks that would expand their knowledge. 

I made sure that I spoke loud and clear when teaching the students. Once I noticed that the students were engaging in the lesson, I felt very proud that I was able to get the students attention and help them to learn from the lessons. I felt that when performing in front of the classroom, each member of the group was able to flow with each other and build on as we went along with the lesson. This worked really well because we practiced many times and knew our material well. 

I learned from teaching in this classroom that constant review is crucial for students to understand what they have learned. The "stop and ponder" questions are very important in order to see if the students are understanding all the information that some are seeing for the first time. If a student is struggling and getting frustrated, it is important that you slow down and help this student to understand what they are struggling with. If a student is getting frustrated, it can lead to the student developing a negative attitude towards science. This student had me thinking about myself when I was a student. I remember being frustrated with science because I did not understand it and my teachers wouldn't help me but would instead make me feel bad about myself for not understanding. I do not want this to happen to any of my students. I learned that as a teacher, it is important to make sure that all the students understand what is being taught.

I also learned that students will have different speeds of learning when being taught new information. There were some students who were extremely bright and already knew about a lot of the information that we were teaching. There were also students who were learning this for the first time but were able to pick up on the information quickly. However, there were students who were learning this for the first time and needed to learn at a slower pace. I feel like my teacher peers and I taught the lesson pretty fast. We did not leave the students enough time to fill in their graphic organizers or even time to reflect about what they had learned from the slides. It is important that teachers really go in depth with what they are teaching and get the students engaged so that they will develop a deeper understanding. 

Overall, I feel like my teaching peers and I did a great job. The students loved our inquiry activity where we had them help Dr. Rock sort the rocks into the three types. The students learned a lot about the three types of rocks and were excited by the activities. I will definitely be using these methods and activities in my future classroom. I will also keep in mind of everything that I learned from teaching in this classroom for future reference when teaching a variety of different students.