My First Science Lesson!

So on Monday, myself and Laura presented our first lesson on rocks and minerals to a 4th grade class.  Of course we were both really nervous before the class started at 1:45, but we remained optimistic the whole time.  Before we started to teach the lesson, we set up all the rocks and other materials at the front of the classroom.  Our teacher was nice enough to set up the tables already with students sitting next to their partners, which made it a lot easier for Laura and I to set up.  We then did a mock lesson, going through each step that we were going to make throughout the 45 minutes of teaching.  We did this just to make sure that we knew what was going to be said and who was going to say what.  And then 1:45 came along, and the students were sitting down, excited to hear what we had to say.

Before we started, Mrs. Gilmore entered the classroom.  I thought she would have made me even more nervous knowing that she was watching, but her smiling face was actually comforting to see.  I began the lesson stating that we were going to be learning about rocks, and asked them if they were excited to be scientists for the day and the response from them actually got me a bit excited to continue.  As we started explaining to the students about the lesson and their journals, I found that they were all very attentive and easy to work with.  Being organized definitely helped to get everything squared away!  We made sure to tell them that being great scientists, these rocks were their specimens and therefore needed to be treated with respect.  That meant that they should not throw them around like toys, or try to put them in their mouths.  One of the students had already made it clear that rocks did not taste good by stating that when he was three years old he ate one, so that was definitely an interesting fact to learn!

As the lesson continued, I was worried that the students were not going to be very eager to ask questions or to volunteer to share their ideas, but I was completely wrong about that!  We had them discuss with their partners all the things they knew about rocks along with possible questions that they wanted to address and learn.  We then called on different students to share their ideas, and we wrote them on pieces of paper on the whiteboard in front of the class.  Some of the ideas were quite interesting, especially when one of the students stated that the conglomerate rock looked like baby puke.  We also got another interesting question when one of the students asked how to spell "booger."  I think Laura dealt with this fantastically by telling the student that "booger" isn't really a scientific word that we should use, and asked her why she wanted to use that word.  She explained that the color of the rock was yellow like a booger, but Laura asked "Then why don't you just write down yellow as one of your properties?"  Thankfully the student was satisfied with that answer.

The lesson soon came to an end, and the students did not want us to leave, which made me feel good and accomplished.  We made sure to introduce what we would be covering next week, and they seemed excited to see us again.  We got to talk to the teacher after class, and she went over some things that could possibly work better next time.  Laura and myself decided that we would make name tags for every student so that we could start learning their names.  We also realized that our step-by-step instructions were not very kid-friendly, so we decided that everytime we made instructions, we would just make a simple checklist of things that the students would have to make their goals after each lesson.  These instructions were made for the children on IEPs, but in order to not single anyone out, we typed them up for the entire class.

After teaching this first lesson, I feel a lot more confident about teaching future lessons.  It was definitely an awesome experience to take control of a class for the first time, and I look forward in doing this every Monday!  I hope everyone enjoyed their experiences as well, and I'm sure all of you did a great job!