10/16

On Monday I had the opportunity of giving an entire lecture to Mr. Borton's second hour class. I felt a little uncomfortable with the lecture because I didn't feel like I knew the material very well, even though I studied over it a little the night before. I also wanted to try and align it to what Mr. Borton was doing to keep all his classes on track together. I watched Mr. Borton teach first hour to see how he did it and then I tried it the next hour. I enjoy watching Mr. Borton as he has a way of connecting in comical ways with the kids and they really like it. I am not as comfortable up in front yet and I try to do that but it doesn't work as well as I would like - yet!. I tried really hard to get the kids involved in the lecture and participating. I had a couple of volunteer students come up to the board and draw an experiment for me, that we then talked about, and they seemed to like doing that. I also tried to practice what I read about questioning in the articles Todd gave me. I think there is something to that, about starting by asking the kids things which they are confident in answering and don't have to worry about getting it wrong. The students participated well I thought. Still I admit that I felt like my thoughts during the lecture were a bit disconnected for the students. They were feverishly writing down the notes on the overhead (which they get points for - it makes them take notes anyway), but it seemed like the real listening and student participation didn't come until I left the slide on the overhead up long enough for them to write it down and then they could get more into it. The kids really liked it when we talked about cow puss and small pox vaccines but I'm not sure they understood a thing I said about Pasteur. Good practice anyway and hopefully I'll be lecturing again on bacteria this Thursday.