This week I had a blast teaching. This must be the magic point where I start to feel really comfortable with my students. I was a little apprehensive of teaching the senior accounting class, but it has turned out to be a lot of fun. Even though the students like to get a little chatty, they also contribute to the class and stay focused. I appreciate their effort in class since I am putting so much effort into preparing. It makes my time spent feel worthwhile.
I also had another personal victory this week. I mentioned in another post that I had a conflict with a student. She was very upset about me covering her keys while she was typing, and her behavior was way out of line! I happen to be very amused this week because, despite her best efforts, she is enjoying class. She has three friends in the class who had all decided I am was so lame, but we have been doing some pretty fun activities lately and they are loving it. Hate it when that happens. ;)
This week I would have changed some aspects of the accounting lesson I did today. I decided to experiment with using PowerPoint to review a large problem we were doing in class. The problem was far to long to do from scratch so I used some print screens of the teacher key. I didn't showed the students one journal entry at a time, but the entire line was exposed at once. This is not the typical way I do this, and I felt it wasn't effective. Students were writing instead of thinking all the parts through. I had cleared my PowerPoint with my co-op before I presented it, and we decided to experiment and see how it went. Turns out for this long problem I would rather use a good old fashioned transparency. Luckily there is always Monday and we will finish the in-class problem that way.
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Sandy, I am glad to hear that things are going so well. I think we all knew you were going to really catch the students! I am big into using power point to teach unfortunately the Accounting room I teach in does not have the equipment needed to do them. Our tech guy said he is going to work on getting me something for Monday so hopefully it will happen.
ReplyDeleteHope you have a great week seven!
Sandy - Your statement, "students were writing instead of thinking all the parts through" is a huge reflection statement! If we have students merely write/copy what is projected, they are truly only doing that....copying the words and letters they see. It's something like if we hear something but not really listen to the message. Just because students "copy" the information as "notes" doesn't mean they process the information that leads to conceptual understanding.
ReplyDeleteThis generation of students learn and understand by "kneading" the content. They have to play with it through engagement, visual cues, and collaboration. They do NOT learn and understand the way my generation was fed the information in the traditional uncollaborative way. We were literally given the information in prose form and told to learn it.
My wish for all the student teachers is to recognize the millennial students in your classroom and create lessons that engage them, challenge them, and cause them to go to each other to create and construct the knowledge and understanding. That collaborative piece makes for lifelong learners!!!
You are doing wonderful things in the classroom when it comes to classroom management and presentation of content. Keep up the good work!