I saw that the topic in the book for tonight was your greatest success and I don't have anything in particular on my mind this late at night so I am just going with that.
I feel my greatest success thus far has been introducing and launching the social studies curriculum with my class. The students had been working on science since the beginning of the year and at the end of last week I got to introduce them to the social studies curriculum starting with the first lesson and continuing on. I was nervous for my first lesson, but now I feel more comfortable. We will finish chapter 2 at the end of this week already. It was valuable experience getting to work with the curriculum materials and learning how to use them to plan out lessons. I also learned a lot by talking with my cooperating teaching about what phases of the curriculum lessons could be condensed or taken out to fit the pacing of the year better. I learn well by doing and this was the most hands on experience I have had so far with lesson planning. With social studies coming to an end this week we will be moving back to science. I hope to get to have a similar experience with those curriculum materials as well.
Forgive me, Nicole. Is social studies the topic you were teaching when I visited last week--Geography and map skills? I think that's right. In my brain, when someone says social studies, I always think history, so I have to break that mental habit.
ReplyDeleteHaving observed you teaching, I can verify that you're getting up-close-and-personal with traditional curriculum material. You have to wrestle with the amount of information and suggested activities for each lesson in order to balance it with the amount of time you have to teach. I'm not sure that ever gets easier, but with experience, you'll come to worry less about what you didn't get to because there's always time to go back, or you find out that you taught just what was needed.
When I taught fifth grade, I went through a period when I thought I'd like to be a curriculum designer--one of those people who wrote the teachers' manuals for social studies or language arts. It's great fun to plan a bunch of engaging activities, but not as fun to get the work mashed into a 40 minute class period :-)
I'm glad you're feeling a sense of success. I'm looking forward to my next visit--maybe I'll see some science teaching.