Thursday, April 19, 2012

Lesson Reflection


Although nothing in life ever goes directly as planned, I am generally pleased with how my lesson turned out. I prepared for the day by reviewing my lesson plan and PowerPoint so I would be comfortable with the order of the lesson as well as what I would be talking about. I didn’t exactly have a behavior plan but the class ended up being pretty well behaved. One student had his phone out and I just kindly asked him to put it away and there was no problem. Another student insisted on standing during the lesson. At first I just let her do her thing since she was in the back of the class and wasn’t distracting anyone. When this student got up and stood on her chair it became a safety issue and once again I kindly asked her to sit down and she listened. I believe respect and kindness go a long way in a classroom and If I wish to be respected, I must first respect my students. Yelling and getting frustrated when kids act out will only cause them to act out more because they know it bothers you.

The main objectives of my lesson were to explain the macronutrients and develop a healthy meal plan for one day.  As an informal assessment, the students had an opportunity to develop a meal plan at the end of class. A future exam would assess their knowledge on the macronutrients. Overall, my lesson plan was executed as written with the exception of some minor details. I wrote that I wanted one responsible student to click the Smart Board during the game, but instead I had the teams choose who they wanted to come up at each question. This was fine and didn’t negatively affect my lesson in any way.

The MOST IMPORTANT thing I tried to teach my student is that eating healthy (balanced meals, low saturated fat and sugar intake) can prevent age-related diseases (type II diabetes, heart disease, osteoporosis etc.) therefore adding years to your life. I feel I got my point across the best I could. Even after the lesson everyone said they learned something new – definitely rewarding to hear that!

One of my students told me I packed too much information into the lesson… I was afraid I would do that. I just have so much I want to share with people about health and nutrition and I forget that it’s a lot to take in a once. Next time I may simplify the lesson even more, maybe save disease prevention for a whole new day. Another thing I know I need to work on are my “um’s” “like’s” and “you guys.” I tend to throw these casual words and phrases around a lot when I speak, and it just doesn’t sound professional when teaching. Definitely something to work on!

After hearing such positive feedback from the students and reading their reviews I feel confident in my decision to become a teacher. J

Saturday, March 31, 2012

Bulletin Board


Although the final product didn't exactly match what I visioned it to look like, our bulletin board is still colorful, fun and informative. If you notice the sloppy pink sign on the left - I spent a decent amount of time making a nice sign over spring break... and I forgot it back at my apartment. We were pressed for time so I had to quickly make one. I took it as a learning experience, sometimes teachers have to improvise. A border would have looked nice too. Oh well, next time!

Friday, March 9, 2012

Digital Story Reflection

Creating a digital story it not an easy process. It requires a lot of thought, time and preparation. The first step is to think of an idea. For me this was a one sentence idea that I built off of. I knew I wanted to follow a person in their journey to becoming healthy but I had no idea how I was going to go around this. Luckily Kevin volunteered to help me by being the main character in the story and we ended up working on the whole project together. Initially I was going to work alone but I'm happy I ended up having a partner in the end because this was such a large project.

After I had the idea set it was time to come up with the actual story. I wrote up something briefly and Kevin helped me to perfect it. After we had the story set, we thought of what pictures/videos could be used with each line. We created a script with the picture and video notations next to each line. This preparation made the actual process a lot easier.

One Saturday Kevin and I took all the pictures and videos. It only took about an hour or two because we had direction; we knew exactly what we needed.

To be continued...

Friday, February 24, 2012

End of Day 2

Kevin and I feel confident about our digital story so far. We think everyone is going to really enjoy it. Today we brainstormed all the pictures and videos we are going to need and plan to meet tomorrow to actually bring our ideas to life. We even created a list of props we are going to need so everything goes smoothly tomorrow. I began listening to some music today that I may incorporate into the video. I'm excited to see how all our ideas turn out.

Digital Story Day 2

It's been a busy week for me so unfortunately I didn't get to put in much work since last class. We have our story finalized and we pretty much know of the pictures and videos we will be using. I plan to record my voice today and get together with Kevin over the weekend to take pictures. If we can get all of that out of the way by Sunday, we will have all of next week to put the video together. I feel that we are right on track.