TOday I had my first lesson on my own today, and I crashed and burned. Well not really, but I felt I did. I even had it written down what I was going to say,,,but I did'nt come over well. My class teacher was in the class with me, and she said I was fine.....but I dunno I got some blank looking faces at me. The thing I am finding difficult, is the fact that because I am teaching programming - the kids are moving at all different paces, so delivering a lesson to the whole class is rather difficult. I am starting doing progress checks so that I know what stage everyone is at.
I don't really have much to talk about because nothing really interesting happened today,, good or bad.
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5 comments:
Sounds like you are off to a good start.
Hi lesley,
I think we student teachers can often be pretty hard on ourselves. I know I am always thinking of all the things I could have done better. Im enjoying teaching two different classes the same project because after the first time I can think about how I might do things differently and implement them for the second class. A good habit to get into I suppose. However, It doesnt mean I always improve though - I think differnet things work for differnet classes. Mmm... Dont be so hard on yourself.
The first one is always the worst. I pretty much think I could have done every lecture better no matter what the feedback. It is especially tough when, as you noted, the students are all over the map knowledge wise. But it sounds like you did fine. At least you noticed the blank looks. :-)
I don't have a crit date yet :( but I am also having to teach programming. We're doing VB and I just took the book home and installed it and learnt it because I haven't done VB before!
Programming is a damn hard thing to explain and it doesn't seem to help when a book says that the command
List1.RemoveItem List1.ListCount -1
removes the last item from the list because it doesn't explain it at all.
I think the most important thing to do is to emphasise the importance of commenting and planning your program - and it helps if you have a projector so that you can show them examples. I did the example form p39 (in the Abe Holmes book) on the board and their understanding seems to have improved.
Dave (Turnbull)
P.S. Bah! I don't like blogging so I ain't signed up yet (!)
I sympathise with Dave.
In my last placement, I observed Higher pupils using VB.NET, and it is a total fiddle to use.
In my current placement, I have learned True Basic and it's much more straightforward and easy to explain.
(Maybe not easy to teach -- that's a whole 'nother matter, as they say -- but the code is clean and easy to analyse.)
Anyone agree ..?
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