The first day ever teaching an entire class and being the first group to go, can you imagine how nerve racking it was? We prepared for our first lesson for a week and a half. We met up after class, before class and even on the weekends. We were completely prepared and ready to go. Upon arrival, we are struck with the bad news, "there is no wifi". It felt like that was the worst news I have ever gotten. Our updated PowerPoint was threw google slides, it was perfect but now pointless since we couldn't access it. We had to use a previous unedited PowerPoint. The wifi issue really threw us off, but we were able to improvise and continue our lesson. The students engaged in our direct portion of the lesson plan. We transitioned to our inquiry lesson by using a voki Ms. Mineral. Since there was no internet access we read a letter from Ms. Mineral explaining that she has a mission for us. We broke up into groups and identified two minerals by using a variety of different tests. We originally had groups picked for the students but since the power point didn't work we didn't have that slide and it turned out the teacher had groups for the students already. There is a lot I wish we knew that the teacher didn't tell us till after our first lesson, I guess that's just part of being group one. One teacher candidate went to each group and helped the students identify the minerals. My group was very interested in the minerals but it took much longer to complete all the tests then expected. We should have changed our timing a little and it would have helped if students didn't show up late. At the end of our lesson we ran out of time and had to give the students homework as their independent practice. The students were given a worksheet to write a letter to Ms. Mineral explaining the minerals they had in their group. The students loved the concept of Ms. Mineral, I was really surprised since they were in 6th grade but most of them believed she was real and was very interested in knowing more about her.
Dear Ms. Mineral....
Overall the first day turned out to be a little unorganized, even with all of our preparation. It was disappointing that we didn't have internet but it was a learning lesson for all of us. Internet is a very valuable resource that can be incorporated in a classroom but do not rely on it. Some schools don't have internet at all, and sometimes the internet is just laggy. Always have a backup plan and other options available that aren't internet based. Now we know how to prepare for our second day teaching.
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