Week Four: One for the Books

          Monday started off as a normal day with no two hour delay, despite the slushy mess outside! I was thankful for the normal schedule to keep my lessons on track until an announcement was made that Elizabethtown was getting an early dismissal at 1pm. I managed to cover most of what I wanted in the shorter class period. This just reiterated the fact that as a teacher, I must be flexible! The students were excited to be getting out early and were chatty during class. Other than that, they seemed interested in the lesson and managed to give me their attention. One thing Mr. Anderson did talk to me about after this lesson is learning to work on my wait time as far as getting students’ attention while they are talking or not paying attention. This is something I want to make sure I have a good handle on now so it doesn’t get out of hand as the semester goes on.

            On Tuesday, I had to teach my lesson a little backwards but it ended up working out. I started off class by allowing students to finish the notecards they were working on yesterday. This took longer than I had anticipated. I then gave students an article about why it is important to protect and preserve wetlands to lead into today’s lesson. After going over the article, I taught my lesson while students took notes. I had planned to show a twenty minute video with a worksheet in today’s class but ended up running out of time, something I didn’t think would happen with block scheduling! I took the students out to feed the fish and that wrapped up class. I was very excited about today’s lesson though because I took Mr. Anderson’s advice from my observation yesterday and put in place today. Wait time actually does work! I used it twice today in class and my students stopped talking. I also made sure to explain why today’s lesson was important and why it matters. I felt good about today’s lesson!

            Dr. Ewing visited for my first observation on Wednesday. I wasn’t nervous at all; I was actually really excited for the lesson! Since I was teaching about wetlands this week, I chose to have students complete an inquiry lab about oil spills while Dr. Ewing was there. I started off the lesson with a real life experience about an oil spill in Harrisburg in 2013 that affected the wetland at Wildwood Park where I was interning that summer. I showed pictures and described what happened for the first few minutes of class. I then introduced the inquiry lab, a simulated oil spill, and gave students brief directions for what they would be doing. I took students over to the shop where I had the lab set up and allowed them to work. Students had to use materials provided to determine what best cleans up an oil spill. It didn’t hit them until about half way through that in order to determine how much oil was soaked up, they should have weighed the material before and after! I finished off class with a Bill Nye the Science Guy movie about wetlands.

            I think this observation will be Dr. Ewing’s most interesting because in the last five minutes of class, I ran out of the room and headed to the bathroom. I ended up throwing up all over the bathroom and getting some on myself. I was very embarrassed to say the least. As a result, I was not able to go to school on Thursday because I had a fever of 101. I was able to return to school on Friday. I got to practice welding in second block. In aquatics, I caught up with what I missed on Thursday. My students were working on creating a wetland in the display case outside of Mr. Anderson’s classroom. Students worked on the different aspects of the wetland: plants, animals, water, mammals, reptiles/amphibians, background, and informative sign. The final piece will come together on Monday and I am so excited to see the final project! As I look ahead to next week, we will wrap up wetlands on Monday. Tuesday we will begin water calculations. I will be bringing a math teacher in to assist with some of the lessons when I begin teaching math. We will also be cleaning the fish tanks next week as well as weighing and measuring the fish! Bring on week five!