Briana's Response #8

I can't believe we're already into our second week of teaching! It blows my mind that I've only got 4 more days of teaching left...and then the next time I'm in a classroom will be for my student teaching! Weird. And kind of scary at the same time. I'm loving being in the classroom, getting to know our students and working with Miriam and Kristy. They're such great people and teachers! I learn so much just from watching them teach and the way they interact with the students. Its cool to see how different yet effective we all are. This past thursday we allowed our students time to research in the computer lab for their historical profile presentations that are due this wednesday. At first I was a little worried that we haven't been spending enough time actually instructing them, and we're just allowing them to work on their own too much. But I've begun to realize that learning for yourself can be a very effective way of growing in a subject. Granted, we were all there to answer questions and to help when needed but their research was their own. When we first planned the lesson for that day we'd only been planning on giving them an example and then going to the research lab. But we decided to add a few more activities to get them asking questions and to give a more in depth example of a good research presentation. I felt like the stuff that we added really helped with the balance between instruction and activity. We were able to teach them what a good presentation should look like with a good activity afterwards, but then allow them time to work for themselves. The balance for the day felt really good. And then with 5 minutes to spare we played a fun game that they all really enjoyed! Balance is important.