This journal marks the beginning of my primary school student teaching experience. I am excited to be teaching this age level and had been looking forward to getting the chance to be hands-on in the elementary classroom. I was eager to start and got the opportunity to take the reigns right away teaching one of my mentor's lessons. Now I am writing my own lessons and similar to my secondary experience, I have found myself with so many ideas that I am having a difficult time breaking down my teaching into clear, simple steps that get the learning targets across in a way students can understand. Reflecting back on my education I realized I am starting with an idea that has a finished product in mind but I need to practice "unpacking" my lessons. To unpack my lesson ideas I need to pinpoint the ingredients that make up a successful project. These ingredients are things like art vocabulary, techniques, motivation, assessment, management all blended with choice-based approaches.
Personally, this experience is bringing me to the realization that the more I apply and try my mentor teacher's different approaches the better I can understand how to unpack a lesson and find the key ingredients I need to create a well-received recipe. I want to spend time trying their different methods until I create my own one-of-a-kind recipe for how I teach, manage and assess in my classroom.
Similar to baking a pie, your first attempt may not be your best. Maybe your crust wasn't flakey and didn't cook all the way through but it still had good flavor. Next time, you try your mom's crust recipe and it's perfect but your filling is runny and doesn't hold together. Then you try a new cookbook and discover the perfect balance of fruit to sugar for your filling and it holds much better. Now you want to make it more visually appealing so you try new techniques with the crust and it takes the pie to a whole new level. As time goes on you continue to use some of these techniques but are always open to new suggestions, you try new flavors and add new ingredients you haven't tried before to test their possibilities.
Through trial and error, I too can find my perfect recipe for teaching. In the future, I want to continue to pick other teachers brains and steal their "recipes" and blend them with mine. There is a lot to learn and share in the teacher community and it is one of my greatest resources I must take advantage of!
Personally, this experience is bringing me to the realization that the more I apply and try my mentor teacher's different approaches the better I can understand how to unpack a lesson and find the key ingredients I need to create a well-received recipe. I want to spend time trying their different methods until I create my own one-of-a-kind recipe for how I teach, manage and assess in my classroom.
Similar to baking a pie, your first attempt may not be your best. Maybe your crust wasn't flakey and didn't cook all the way through but it still had good flavor. Next time, you try your mom's crust recipe and it's perfect but your filling is runny and doesn't hold together. Then you try a new cookbook and discover the perfect balance of fruit to sugar for your filling and it holds much better. Now you want to make it more visually appealing so you try new techniques with the crust and it takes the pie to a whole new level. As time goes on you continue to use some of these techniques but are always open to new suggestions, you try new flavors and add new ingredients you haven't tried before to test their possibilities.
Through trial and error, I too can find my perfect recipe for teaching. In the future, I want to continue to pick other teachers brains and steal their "recipes" and blend them with mine. There is a lot to learn and share in the teacher community and it is one of my greatest resources I must take advantage of!