Check-In 12

 I taught the same lesson to the other class this week; the one that Dr. Spanke was sitting in on. He had a lot of notes but I think I’m doing well, overall. The main critique he had of me (and something I know I do often that I need to work on) is that I advance through lessons rather fast. My lesson last week was supposed to go for 45 minutes and I only went for 35. Added some things to the lesson for this week in hopes that I would have more things for students to do and learn so I could shoot for 45 minutes and it still ended up being only 35. I think this happened because I had already taught the lesson so I breezed through it and students may have lost out. I added elements to this lesson such as more definitions and a different approach to analysis, some helpful Shakespeare vocabulary they might encounter often while working through Hamlet, a potential practice assessment students can do while reading, and quotes we use in the modern day that students might not have known had their origins in Shakespeare. Students responded well to the analysis of quotes and looking into modern quotes that are from Shakespeare. Unfortunately, it didn’t go as well as when I taught the lesson in the previous class, but students were still receptive and generally engaged. Dr. Spanke commended me on the rapport I had with students, as well as some sass one student would give me. This student often tries to be difficult on purpose and likes to say things like “why would I need to know that?” and “yea, I’m not doing that.” I started just asking this student why and why not questions to challenge him back, and often called on him to answer questions, which he, surprisingly, engaged in, despite some teeth pulling. My mentor teacher also expressed pride in my lesson planning and presentation. I had given a practice lesson some weeks ago that went alright, but not as well as this one did. I’m very excited to do more lessons, and I’m glad I was able to get feedback from two different mentors on how to improve. Overall, Dr. Spanke was only there to respond to our classroom management and how we act in a classroom, not necessarily our ability to teach and create a lesson, but he said I did well with this as well. Apparently, he later asked my mentor teacher if I created the presentation on my own or if I used an outline from her. She told him I created it myself and he was impressed. All the feedback, positive and negative, has been very encouraging.