I was very nervous walking into the school on Thursday.

I was teaching a math

lesson in the third period and I was stressed. The staff at the school are so
welcoming and I started my morning off on a very uplifting note after chatting with
another teacher. She said “Being nervous is probably a good thing. If you aren’t
nervous something is wrong”. So, I embraced my nervousness. Before the math
lesson I was going to be teaching my TA told the class that I was going to be
teaching them math and the students were so excited.  That made most of my
nervousness wash away because I knew that they would accept me with open arms.
I would love to say that my lesson went well due to my amazing skills, but I think it
went well because of the students. They were so respectful, they listened, they
asked questions when they didn’t understand and most importantly, they were
receptive to the questions I asked them. Afterward my TA was telling me that the
students normally use “bellwork” at the beginning of class if the class is directly
after a school bell for recess and such. I wasn’t aware of the fact that they always
do “bellwork” so I didn’t start my lesson with it and the kids didn’t even seem
phased. When I was a grade five student I probably would have said “Miss. Pharis
we don’t normally do it this way” or “Miss. Pharis you skipped bell work”. The
students just went along with it without saying anything about it. Now that I know
about “bellwork” and the concept of it I will use it to begin lessons and help
students refocus after an exciting recess or lunch or to review past knowledge. It
was useful to have taught my first lesson and been given feedback from my TA
because now I know many other things, she usually does in her math lessons. Such
as reminding students to use patterns to count instead of counting by one. Doing
the A to D questions as a group discussion to check for understanding. I got so
caught up in the lesson that I forgot to check the time and the other math group
had come back and there wasn’t time for a proper closure. Next time Ill be sure to
keep a close look on the time and have a closure to recap what we learned.

On Friday I began the day teaching a health lesson on respect. It went great! The
students were engaged, and they had a really good understanding of what respect
meant. It went so well that I likely could have had an additional activity for some
students. My TA gave me really good ideas for future lessons such as “tabletop
texting” where there is a printed quote or phrase and groups of students go around
and write their responses to each one. One thing I will improve on is remembering
to write on the board more often for when students are telling me their ideas.
In the afternoon on Friday I taught an ELA lesson on self monitoring. It went
relatively well, the students seemed to have a lot of energy and if I would have
planned for this, I likely would have incorporated a brain break into the lesson. For
future lessons I would demonstrate an example on the board of the kind of answers
that could go in their charts. Now that I know students sign out before going to the
washroom, I would remind them to do so. I also need to remind students to focus
when others are speaking or reading to the class.

I would say that my confidence has increased significantly within just these few
days. It helped me tremendously knowing all the student’s names by my first
lesson. It showed them see that I care about who they are. With this I think they
have begun to care about me, and they are excited when I teach a lesson which
helps me be more confident in front of the class.