I'm getting back into the swing of things much quicker than expected. Today was back to teaching and I'm definitely beginning to notice where the difference in cirriculum is altering my planning and teaching.

As I get further into the chapter, while planning I find it difficult not knowing where their skills are at for certain content. For example, today I introduced proportions. Now through some activities I wanted them to write a fraction as a decimal, then a percent. Where I ran into trouble was that I was unsure of how much I could expect of them to do without a calculator. I think I was just as nervous about underestimating the students as I am to overestimate their abilities. Mr. Sinnot is really helpful, and patient, when it comes to all of my questions. Not knowing specific terminology, methods or prerequisites of my students can make planning a bit of a guessing game sometimes. A couple of times the kids have taught me a thing or two about a different terminology for something I would have never even thought to ask about. I think they enjoy teaching me a thing or two.

Learning how to teacher younger kids while at the same time adjusting and learning about a new culture and curriculum is tough. I think I'm getting a handle on how to work with these kids, as well as the best way to structure a lesson so that they want to stay engaged the entire class period. Understandable, this engagement isn't at 100%, but the students seem to enjoy my lessons and have told me they are learning a lot from me. They may just be sucking up, but I'll take it!

One big difference is that I only have this particular class/lesson once a day. At the high school I was at for my last placement, I had 5 periods of the same class. I was able to teach my lesson as planned then see what work, what didn't and then adjust throughout the day. Despite poor first period always being the guinney pigs, I really liked having the oppertunity to make changes so that the lesson becomes more successful. Now I am getting used to adjusting during the lesson and making changes to the next days lesson when things do not go as well as planned. I'm happy that each of my placements have in a way forced me to work on one of my weaker abilities.

It's no secret I like a plan, and sticking to it. This is rarely possible in a classroom. It's impossible to predict exactly how students will react to content or activities, so it's imperative to make adjustments when necessary. Between my last placement and my current one, I would no longer regard this as a weakness. While I may never stop making strict schedules and plans in my personal life, in the classroom I'm becoming much more flexible.

This actually strengthened my lesson today. Since we had two weeks off, I decided to begin my lesson with a review. There were some things I was expecting students to remember but they were struggling. Instead of spending extra time just on the review, we continued on to the new material with the promise of returning to review material for those students struggling. While going over the new material I was much more aware of making connections so that I could review even when I wasn't reviewing. By the time we had the oppertunity to return to the review, all questions had been answered.

Ok so Lock Haven and Steve get to through in an "I told you so" now, I am really learning a lot from being in the middle school aged class. Even if I went into it kicking and screaming.