Unloading the Trailer: Micro Teaching

My micro-teaching experience occurred November 14th-16th at Juniata Valley High School, under Mrs Rayleen Russell. Matt and Kayla were also along for the experience. I taught Mrs Russell's 3rd period of the day, which is an 8th grade rotational course (she sees every 8th grader in the school for 1/4, or one marking period). This was a situation that I did not expect to find myself in as a pre-service teacher, but I took on the challenge with an open mind. My topic:
Overall, I like the feeling I got from being in front of a class three days in a row. I enjoyed writing my lessons from MyCaert. I woke up each morning excited to teach. I will take the following away as this chapter of my #teachag journey comes quickly to an end.

Gems

• Kahoot: When I observed her class, she spent the day playing a kahoot game with them to review livestock breeds. I had heard of it before but had never used it. The students seemed to love it, so I decided to try it as a unique form of assessment. This definitely had their most undivided attention of any of my activities. One student actually said "you are a winner in my book" when I announced the activity. I need to tweak my overall management of the activity, but I believe I found a favorite tool for the teacher tool box. 
• Showing Learning: I feel I did a good job of actually showing growth in my 3 days there, via kahoot as described above. For the beginning pre-test (10 questions) the students ended with 43% correct answers. For the summitive test (15 questions, 10 repeat and 5 new), students ended with 65% correct answers. That may not seem like a lot, but most incorrect answers were centered around a few questions, which I will take as a fault on my part. Overall, I was able to show and archive growth with very little input on my part.
• Classroom Management: 8th graders are a handful. I had in my mind that I could not trust them farther than I could throw them (which being 8th graders is not too shabby). I made sure that they knew I was in charge, and they played to me well that way. I am a fan of the "proximity to the trouble student" strategy and it worked well at least three times. My strongest example was actually with a senior who spends the period as Mrs Russell's senior project. The students were working on group work, and he and I chatted briefly about the grade level. One student acted up and the senior took it upon himself to yell "hey sh*t brain" at the student. I acted quickly and sternly told him that that behavior is not tolerated when I am in the room. The behavior stopped, but I would be interested to see how that would have changed his attitude if I was there more days.

Ops

• Over Lecture/Share: Lecture is the best way to convey a lot of information in a short amount of time. That is what I tried to do, and my teaching became very lecture heavy. It is not necessary the fact that this is what I did, but I did it for up to 20 minutes at a time. A no-no for any age group. The thing is, my topic was so large that I had a hard time narrowing down a focus area. I would like to do other activities, but I don't think I could have covered the same material. Think: learn a few things well, not cover a lot of things.
• Classroom Management: I spent too much time working with students on the ends of the behavior spectrum, that a few in the middle felt over looked
• Clarity of Instruction: I have a hard time articulating the thoughts in my head, which can cause my thoughts to get jumbled. Because of this, I learned I need to slow down and deliberately go through the 4 elements of instructions (signal, task, comprehension, signal).

Concerns

• Prep Time: I spent a lot of time prepping for each class. I hope it gets better. This worries me as I will be taking on a full load here in a few months.