On November 4th, a group of 6th- and 7th-grade students from St. Bernard Catholic School (SBCS) took a field trip to our college campus for the day. We had created a schedule for them to follow throughout the day that included 3 teaching sessions, mini tours of the campus in between sessions, and, of course, lunch in our Caf. As a group, we created an overall theme that we wanted to get the kids to gain from the day, and that was, “making the world a better place through community.” With this theme, we created three learning outcomes for each teaching team to portray through their teaching sessions. These learning outcomes included things like students being able to effectively learn and collaborate with peers, use critical thinking skills, and become aware of future career choices.
One thing that I learned from working with the 6th- and 7th-grade students from SBCS is the importance of overplanning. My teaching team and I had created a lesson plan with activities for the kids to do while they were in our teaching session. We had 45 minutes of teaching time, so we planned for exactly 45 minutes of activities. We started with introducing ourselves, then going through a short slide show that included a brief overview of the majors, sports, and extracurriculars here at SNC. Then we played a “would you rather” game that helped the students think about their personalities and how their interests can relate to their future careers. The final activity that we planned was a trivia game recapping our session. In each of the sessions, we had about eight minutes of time left over after completing all of our activities. We had to think on the fly of something to do with the students for the last few minutes because we didn’t want them sitting around and doing nothing. We ended up playing a few rounds of “Heads Up, Seven Up” because it’s a simple game that most kids know how to play. Though we were able to think of a quick game for them to play, we should’ve planned a longer lesson. Whether that had been more “would you rather” or trivia questions, or another activity. It’s always better to overplan and not get through everything than to have extra time left over with nothing to do. This is because each class, each group of kids, is different. I learned that some groups can be really engaged in the lesson and ask lots of questions, which takes up more time. While other groups have little engagement and excitement towards the lesson, this can make it a very quick, boring lesson. Overall, I learned that, as a teacher, you should overplan your lessons so that you aren’t left with extra time at the end of the class session.
One goal that I have for improvement after this experience is to better my classroom management skills. This is one thing I have always needed to improve, and it is why I wanted to take on the role of “Lead Manager” in my teaching group. I can get students’ attention, but I think I struggle to keep it. I tend to lose them after a few minutes, and then they start to get loud and rowdy again. I need to be able to keep their attention for longer periods of time so that they are listening to the lesson, and we don’t have to keep telling them to be quiet every few minutes. I think I just need to work on being more assertive and in charge to get the students to take me seriously.