Striving Towards Competency

 This week I completed my lesson covering the Kingdoms of Ancient Egypt with Mrs. Fox's 5th and 6th period Social Studies Class. On the first day when I first introduced the topic to the 5th-period class, I was very nervous and had a hard time keeping my mind on track so I ended up making a few mistakes. My first major mistake was talking far faster than I should have which made it a little difficult for students to keep up. My second major mistake was when I finished the lecture portion of my lesson I had an activity prepared for the class to get them a little more excited for the rest of the week by having them build pyramids out of plastic cups. This activity was just a test for me to see if having a fun activity can help build up a relationship with the students or interest in the topic and it had mixed results I would say. Yes, the students did get very excited about the lesson but I did not give directions that were very clear and left the explanation vague which led to a bit...

 This week my partner completed his 3-5 Day Lesson over Mesopotamia and it went pretty well. The students seemed interested and engaged for the most part and they all listened and participated in the activities. But there is one issue that I am not looking forward to dealing with that being the stark difference in engagement between the 5th and 6th periods. The reason this is a cause for concern is that the 5th-period class seems to be the group that is very low energy and is very difficult to keep engaged as none of the students seem to make much of an attempt at participating. However, the 6th-period class is quite the opposite with several students asking questions or wanting to discuss topics, and overall are far more energetic and easier to work with. 

 The first week back in the field went well. It was a bit slow as all of the students are recovering from Halloween so the class was a bit low energy. My partner and I used this time to work with our mentor teacher and prepare our lessons for the next 2 weeks. Mrs. Fox, our mentor teacher, has been a huge help with planning our lessons and providing very honest and constructive criticism about our plans so far while giving us direction and ideas for activities that we can do. Mrs. Fox also explained to us that we will most likely end up going too fast in our lessons since we are not very experienced which is a relief to know that she is understanding about us not knowing how much we can cover or should cover within 50 mins.