Ready, Set, TEACH!

On October 21st, my group- Group 1- The Mightychondrias, were the first to teach our lesson plans to the students at Bishop Dunn. We were beyond NERVOUS. By going first we knew that we were pretty much going to be the example. Each group after was going to get to learn from our mistakes, but we had to do it. On paper our lesson plan was awesome, there was so much we wanted to do. But we just did not have enough time to do it all.

One speed bump we came across is that the students did not come into the classroom until almost 5pm, when our 30 minute Direct Lesson was supposed to start at 4:30. So that set us off a bit. We had SO much information that we felt was important for them to know, but with time restraints we couldnt get to all of it. Once we all realized how we had gone over time we were left feeling like we needed to rush through the rest of the lesson so that we would have enough time to start the 5 senses Taste experiment.

Our Inquiry question was "Does what we see influence how it tastes?" We had different colored and flavored drinks that the students had to hypothesize what they thought the flavor would be based on its color. We had one orange drink that was just water with food coloring. We expected their hypothesis to be that If the color is orange, then it will taste like oranges (or mango, or peach...). They would be surprised when it tasted like nothing.

Things were a little hectic once we started our Inquiry lesson because of how we felt rushed in the direct lesson. Overall, though our lesson did not go exactly how we wanted it it, we definitely learned from this experience. I now know that for future lessons time management is important, especially since things do not always go according to plan. I need to anticipate time running out and have a plan to get the pertinent information in without having to skip chunks of the lesson ( doing this played a major part in our failed lesson).

So, maybe it wasn't perfect and did not turn out as planned, but it was good practice, and we learned from our mistakes (as did the rest of the class).