Throughout the semester, I have taught three workshops in a 7th grade science classroom at the Environmental Science Magnet School at Mary Hooker. The workshops have covered several topics: Lesson 1: Natural Disasters, Lesson 2: Rising Sea Levels, Lesson 3: Preserving Earth’s Resources. Along with the workshops, the groups of students I have taught have also been different. Since there are only 3 7th grade science sections, the groups of students rotated each workshop. All of the workshops I have done have been extremely hands on and engaging for the students. After my first lesson (using spaghetti and marshmallows to build earthquake proof structures), I was overwhelmed with the amount of feedback on how much fun the students had using materials that they wouldn’t find in a classroom. This is something that I made sure to implement into my other workshops.
I have learned a multitude of skills throughout this semester. These skills range from classroom management to writing inquiry based learning activities (curriculum design). The first two skills I have learned are time management within the classroom along with thinking on my feet regarding questions I can be asking to guide deeper learning. Once I had taught my first workshop, I gained an understanding on how to plan out each section of the workshop to make sure I was not going over or under our time. Within the classroom and over the course of the three workshops, I have been lucky enough to have a teacher that would also like to participate in the workshop. While observing how Ms. Beardsley interacts with her students, I was able to learn how to not only ask students guiding questions as they worked, but also use this to reel students attention back into the activity. I noticed the questions Ms. Beardsley was asking her students and how it not only engaged them back into the activity, but also sparked their learning and ideas. After the first lesson, I tried to do this myself in hopes of having the same result. I worked on walking around to each group to ask them questions to spark their ideas and drive to them to think about the activity on a deeper level. All of the questions I was asking them were either based on conversations I heard them having within their groups, what they observed during the activity, or simpler versions of the guiding question. Not only did this engage the students in the lesson if I noticed they were starting to go off topic, but it also helped them think about the activity on a deeper level. I observed this deeper thinking on the worksheets or pieces of paper I asked them to write their thoughts on. I could also see this in the moment when I was asking these questions and students would either call out in excitement, gasp, or start writing ideas down on their sheets. I also had to think on my feet in order to accommodate the different groups of students. Since every class of students I taught rotated, I had to assess each section of students at the beginning of each class. This consisted of changing around timing for the activities, making sure I was walking around engaging them in the lesson more, or helping them on any concepts they did not understand.
Behind the scenes, one thing that I struggled with was curriculum design. When writing learning objectives and activities, I realized that it is hard for me to transfer ideas that I have come up with onto paper in a way that my peers are able to follow along with. While these ideas and activities might make sense in my head, I realized that I was not fully transferring every detail into my lesson plans. The ideas for a curriculum that might make sense in my head or to me since I know what I wanted to do, may not have been clear to my peers since I was not adding in every detail. In order to try to fix this issue I was having, I not only would proof read each activity and objective, but I would also take notes on any confusion my peers had when they reviewed them. Similarly, when designing a curriculum, I started to take notes on what worked and did not work in my previous lesson in order to design the next workshop. For example, in my first lesson, I observed how the students were not using the marshmallows in the way I had hoped. The marshmallows became distracting instantly, so for the remaining lessons I did not chose to use any food as materials. Another example was using two different kinds of materials to demonstrate the objective. I noticed in my rising sea levels that using two different types of ice to demonstrate either a glacier or iceberg helped students grasp the concept of which one would cause sea levels to rise more. I transferred this idea into my final lesson. Since I observed how using two different materials to contrast ideas helped students, when it was suggested to me to use a battery as non renewable energy and a solar panel as renewable energy source, I knew I should use it since it worked in the previous lesson.
Overall, this semester and the time I spent in the classroom taught me a lot about myself as an educator. Whether it was learning more skills on how to think on my feet, or making sure my curriculum designs were clear to all readers, and observing what works and does not work within the classroom, these are all aspects that I am going to carry over into the future.