Over
the last few weeks, we have been working in a 5th grade class. The children in this class are very
rambunctious, because they are in 5th grade, the teachers need to keep
the students engaged which is hard to do, or they will lose them very
quickly. The teacher candidates have done a good job keeping the
children engaged, especially with the activities that they plan. The
only problem is that with some of the activities, the children got too
rambunctious and the class got very loud a little out of control. What
all of the teacher candidates (including myself) needed to learn is how to allow the students to do an engaging (fun) activity without losing control of the classroom. I feel as though we all did learn how to better control the classroom. 
My groups part of the unit was making model ponds and teaching the students about freshwater ecosystems. I would have to say that both of the lessons that I taught with my group did not go as we planned, but that doesn't mean they went bad. The students really enjoyed our activities. When designing the lesson plans, there were a lot of parts that had to be included. It was hard to make one lesson plan between the four group members because we all had different ideas and not all of us were able to do the things we wanted to.
The direct lesson, which was also inquiry because they created their ponds, was a little difficult to design because it was both. it was also difficult because we kept having to change it. when implementing it into the classroom, we thought that we had all of the parts planned and that we eliminated chaos however, it was still a little bit chaotic. The ponds did get made and everything worked out, and it wasn't out of control. The other inquiry lesson was a bit more complicated to design. The activity that we planned was a web quest which alone takes a while to put together. Besides that, there was more parts to it because we were having the students present their findings from the web quest, with the help of a teacher. When we taught the lesson, the students all seemed to know what to do, but we rushed a little bit.
That inquiry lesson plan was a bit of a challenge for us, wasn't it?
ReplyDeleteI think it ended up working for us in the end though. A lot of that had to do with how the students handled it, as you mentioned. I think that students can sometimes be more independent than we give them credit for, and that's important to remember when designing lesson plans.