First Week Of Teaching

I know it's been a while since I last posted.  For all of those who have been wondering what I've been doing (mainly my mother) I've been thrown to the Belizean Jaguars you could say.  We started doing observations the first Monday into our trip and took over that Thursday.  Now when I took over, I completely took over.  We each have teachers we are placed with and whose classes we teach.  I am working with Mr. Joaquin Che who teaches Integrated Science and Earth Science.  On Thursday I took over both classes for Mr. Che.  Some of the other teachers have a more hands on approach to integrating us into the classroom, but when I told Mr. Che my ideas for the lessons he told me to just jump on in.  So starting that Thursday and into the rest of the next week I was teaching all day everyday.  I teach on average 6 classes a day with approximately three preps.  Even though I'm teaching two subjects, the reason for the third prep is because some of the classes have a staggered schedule in that even though it's Wednesday for example I'll be teaching them Thursday's lesson.  It took a bit to understand the schedule, but by the end of the week I was getting the hang of things.

The Integrated Science class is pretty much a general science course taught to the second form students.  Second form is the equivalent of sophomores in high school.  Each form is further divided into groups a-g, and each group has their own classroom.  That means the teachers move from room to room to give their lesson.  This is very different from back at New Hanover High where I had my own classroom and the students moved between their classes.  However, there is a problem of too many teachers and not enough rooms in many of the high schools in Wilmington.  The teachers who don't have their own room are given a cart and have to move between rooms.  The topic I covered for Integrated Science during the first week was Energy.  During the lessons I taught students about Potential and Kinetic Energy, the Law of Conservation, and the different forms of energy.  When we talked about the transformation of energy, I had the kids build roller coasters.  The kids worked in groups of five and using wire insulation, duct tape, and marbles built a roller coaster that had a hill, a turn, and a loop.  The kids loved it.  For the project the students had to diagram their roller coaster, label the places where the most kinetic and potential energy are, list the different forms of energy given off when the marble rolls through the track, and come up with a name for their roller coaster.  When the groups were done setting up their track and adding additional designs such as tunnels and other bits of decoration, I had each group demonstrate their roller coaster to the rest of the class.  The students got really into the project.  When the marble would successfully roll through the entire track for the first time the groups would burst into cheers.  I think the students don't often get to do projects where they work in groups and do projects where they have to figure out things for themselves.  The students are more accustomed to a more teacher centered instruction than a student centered one.  At the end of the lesson I had students write down the things they learned, the things they are confused about, and what they want to know more about.  From the students' responses, I got the impression that they really enjoyed be given the opportunity working in groups to figure out a problem.  For the rest of the time I am teaching here, I am going to try to continue this student centered inquiry learning approach.