Week 4 of Student Teaching

The students had just came back from their thanks giving break and have been taking

their time getting back into the groove. I had started with asking the students how their bread had

came out from the fermentation lab. I was surprised to find that more than half the students had

made the bread and had a variety of different experiences. Luckily, most of the students loved

the bread and had enjoyed the process of making bread and cooking it at home. This was exciting

to see because I had been nervous that the students would hate the experiment and would throw

the bag of bread away the moment they went home.

This week we had started a new unit. This unit is ecology and we had started with some

notes to get the students started with new vocabulary and environmental situations. For

homework they had vocabulary to work on. Since it was three sections worth of vocabulary, I

had given students multiple days before it was due to allow them to have enough time to finish

them. at the end of the week students were put into groups to create a trophic level project. This

project was review of concepts that they had learned in middle school. This allowed students to

work together and remember how food chains and webs were made and why each species in the

food web is important.

I was originally thinking that the students would take about a day and ahlaf to work on

this project. This is because this project was review and that the students were going to work in

a group of four students. This should have allowed the kids to have enough man power and

time to finish. I had found this was not the case. The students ended up taking three days to

work on this project. I had learned that just because I assume students know the information

that they can work fast, is not the case. Students need ample time to be able to review
information, research, and then do the actual project. Now I know that I need to double time

and check in with the students frequently to make sure the students have enough time to work.

This week had been a lot of fun with the students. All the students worked hard on their

projects and seemed to enjoy the tasks at hand. I also feel that my connection with the

students has increased and that many of the students see me as their own teacher. I had many

cases were students would wait for me to be free to ask a question, or would even seek me out

for help. This makes me feel more confident about my position in the classroom. The students

have also been working well with my classroom management. I had to start counting down to

get their attention and for the students to quiet down to listen to the next instructions. Most of

the time the students are quiet before I even reach one. I also make it a point to thank students

for their attention to show that I appreciate their effort.

My goal for the last week of student teaching is to continue to build my relationships

with the students, to develop my classroom management, and to develop my own teaching

style. It is hard to figure out what you do and do not what within my own classroom. This is a

great tome to experiment with different classroom management styles and lessons to do with

the students. Overall, I will continue to work hard and improve my teaching skills.