Video Blog - After The Editing

This part of the assignment was painful. I have not had to watch myself teach yet so editing the video of my lesson was definately an interesting experience. I was surprised at my modeling. I think I did a good job explaining what I wanted from the students. The video shows how they were engaged during the activities and when I looked at the worksheets I created, they had really good things written down. They really liked that I brought in "crude oil" and although I knew they liked it when I taught the lesson, I did not really see how much they liked it until I saw them on the video.

As I suspected, you can see and hear on the video the spells of extreme silence when I asked the students questions. I thought I asked pretty simple questions, but when I edited the video I thought that I could make them more simple. I purposely tried to wait for answers because this was a challenge for me during my first lesson. When I looked at the video it seemed like I waited a long time, but maybe it could have been longer. The same student answering the questions is very apparent in the video as well. This, of course, is what I will be writing my third teaching inquiry about.

I did not realize how short five minutes really is. It was really hard to select what I wanted in the video because there was so much I wanted to put in there. I closed the lesson and still had some time left in class. I am glad I had an extension video clip that I found just in case the lesson went quickly. I did not have time to put that in the video.

Video Blog - After The Lesson

The lesson went well. I modeled everything for them and we went through the lesson step by step and they followed along well. The students seemed genuinely engaged in the activity when I thought they would be distracted by all of the extra people in the classroom. The only problem I had was that it was difficult to get them to answer questions for me. It seemed like everytime I asked a question noone wanted to answer. I kept getting the same child answering my questions. This child is a gifted/talented student and always answers questions quickly in every class. Other than that, the students enjoyed the read-aloud we started with and ended with. Looking back, I think I would ask more questions as we are reading the book so I can make sure they are listening and to reinforce the information in the book.

Video Blog - Before The Lesson

I cannot wait to teach this lesson! My second grade class is currently learning about environments and since I am teaching this lesson during the week of Earth Day, my SBTE and I came up with the idea of doing a lesson about oil spills. I am going to have the students see the effects of water and "crude oil" (black tempura paint and vegetable oil) on a feather. The students will have to make predictions about the effects of both on the feather, then write their observations on the sheet I created when they complete the activites. I hope to take the lesson to another level by brainstorming with them how to clean up oil spills. I have my materials ready to go and I am ready to teach!