The Importance of Proper Planning and Meter Sticks

This past thursday I was given a chance to co-teach a lesson at our dyad with my Dyad partner Caitlin, and being in middle school we had the chance to do it twice. This is a fact I am very glad for, because after the first go, I was not satisfied with my own performance, but after the second time I felt that I had been adequate. This change was brought about in two main ways I think.

1. For the first time we did not plan as much as we maybe should have planned. We relied very much on the pre-existing power point and we essentially read alternating slides to students and ended up having a very unequal distribution of work. In addition the general confusion lead to us stepping on each others toes a couple of times. However, before the second time we taught the lesson, we took some time to really talk through what we were doing, get on the same page as each other and break down the lesson into manageable bits and plan for some assessment. This worked marvelously, from my perspective it freed up my mind to relax a little bit and focus on delivering the bits of the lesson that were my responsibility. This was a valuable lesson for me as I am frequently tempted to take the, "just wing it," approach. I have found though that with careful planning, my mind is much more free to be interactive with students and to be in pleasant spirits.

2. The second time I was holding a meter stick.

I'm really glad I had this learning experience, and it really reinforces my belief that the placements have been far and away the most useful thing we have done in the whole program.