The Ecosystem of Fieldwork

It was so great to be back in front of the 5th grade class teaching whole class instruction! I certainly missed it over the winter break! This semester, my group taught about Ecosystems and Biomes. The direct instruction went great! The students were so into what they were learning and they really seemed to retain information. They learned about different Biomes as well as some of organisms in them. They also learned about some changes in the ecosystems as well as how the weather effects the plant and animal life and why some animals and plants couldn't survive in any other biomes that the one that they live in. Our second lesson was an inquiry lesson. The students had to work in groups to research why specific animals belong in the Biome that they do and then prove to their classmates why they think their animal belongs in their specific biome using the reattach that they had compiled.

Having the privilege to teach in the classroom is most certainly a learning process. By no means did my lessons go perfectly. There was some error in the way that the lesson was run and the organization of it...but its certainly something fixable and something I would definitely take into consideration next time I am planning or teaching any sort of lesson.

As far as assessment went, the students were given a pre-assessment beforehand and that served as the diagnostic assessment. The formative assessment was how well the students were taking notes in the direct instruction lesson. In the inquiry lesson, it was how well they were working with their group and coming up with information for their posters. The summative assessment of the direct instruction lesson was a vocabulary crossword puzzle; and for the inquiry lesson, the students wrote a letter to an imaginary pen pal about a biome of their choice. They were given guidelines to follow and the assignment was collected and graded.

What was somewhat upsetting is that some students took these assignments really seriously and other students couldn't have cared less. All of the teacher candidates put too much time and effort into these lessons and activities to have them not be taken seriously.

Preparing for fieldwork is always stressful; especially when an entire lesson is to be taught. This experience gave me great practice noticing the difference between direct instruction and inquiry. Direct instruction is teacher centered and inquiry is more student centered. Having to plan different types of lessons is a lot harder than it sounds, but having to do it gave me great practice and a more efficient understanding of it.

Implementing the lessons is definitely not as easy as it sounds. No matter how well a lesson is planned out, if something goes wrong, it goes wrong and as the teacher, you always need to be prepared for it. It doesn't matter how well the lesson is scripted or planned; the teacher always needs to have a back up plan. I know I had back-up plans for fieldwork. I can only hope that my co-teacher candidates did as well.

Watching my classmates teach as well made some of the mistakes that I know I made more obvious in a way that allowed me to be more aware of them and work on fixing them. Seeing their lessons also gave me many great ideas for my future classroom. It also showed me that it is obvious when effort is put into each part of the lesson and when effort is lacking in an area. I think all of my co-teacher candidates as well as my classmates did a great job in the classroom. We all need to remember that this is a learning process and we all will learn and grow from the experiences we took part of and the ones we watched.

All in all being in the classroom makes me very excited to be just a little closer to attaining my goal of becoming a teacher. I am looking forward to my next opportunity to teach a whole class instruction.