The majority of the feedback that my cooperating teacher provided me with surrounded the practice of classroom management. She often had very positive things to say about the ways in which I conducted lessons and interacted with the students, but emphasized that classroom management is a skill I should continue to build and develop. There were many times throughout my lessons in which I struggled to keep all of the students on task, and so classroom management became a skill I was very focused on working on and developing.
I would like to continue developing my classroom management skills moving into the 3-week block. I feel that it is a very valuable skill to have, although it is hard to develop. I struggled somewhat to stay consistent with my classroom management throughout this 8 day field experience, and so I think that having the opportunity to work on it on a more consistent basis throughout the 3 week placement will be invaluable.
My cooperating teacher has relayed to me that I have done well in creating interesting and engaging lessons for the students in my class, but while teaching, I often struggled to keep the volume in the classroom down, and to keep the student’s conversations on task, even if they were enjoying and engaged in the tasks that they were doing. A lesson that I struggled with volume in particular was my lesson for week 5 in which we explored the scents of solids and liquids. All of the students were engaged in and completing the activity, but the volume quickly increased to a very loud level and was hard for me to get back down again. This is a common theme throughout my lessons, and is therefore a skill that I would like to continue to work towards.