Lessons Learned During First Fieldwork Sessions

Honestly, I am relieved that our first week of fieldwork is over and done with.  It was definitely stressful being the first group.  Overall I think it went well for our first experience and we learned a lot from this teaching experience.  We can move on now and grow from our mistakes.  I found that if you were comfortable with yourself and what you were teaching it made a world of difference.  As the week went on, I noticed that our group became more comfortable with our role and it reflected in our teaching and lesson plans.  I think our fieldwork group worked well collaboratively.  I recognize that we need to work on our transitions between the different sections of the lesson plan.  We also needed to work on staying in role to keep the students engaged.  This fieldwork has highlighted how the use of technology in the classroom is so vital.  The kids loved when we incorporated the Voki into the lesson.  We also learned the importance of time management.  I think this will come with time and experience.  I think there truly is an art behind being able to create a lesson plan and have it run for about the time allotted.  Our last lesson really ran overtime but we were having so much fun with the kids, and when you are having fun times flies!!  Now looking back there are a lot of things we could have done differently but we learned so much from this experience.  Our experience was invaluable and will make us better teachers for it.