Week 2 of Second Semester of Student Teaching

The second week of student teaching was a lot of fun. The students have calmed

down since I came and have started to adapt to my presence and teaching style. My

master teacher and I have two different teaching styles that end up working well

together when we co-teach. I like to use a lot of visuals and hands on activities for the

students to participate in to be able to better grasp a concept, where my teacher likes

lecture and then practice worksheets. However, I believe that we have influenced each

other to have a more rounded lesson with a mixture of both of our styles of teaching.

This has been an amazing experience being able to develop lessons that can help the

students better understand the concepts.

The students are still working on punnett squares. We had started the week with

a quiz to determine if they need more practice or if we could move on to more complex

punnett squares. The quiz scores were about average and thus we had given the

students an extra day with extra practice before moving onto more complex crosses.

These crosses were dihybrid, co-dominant, incomplete, and sex-linked. After a few lab

activities and practice, I had noticed the student struggled with these new types of

crosses. They were able to complete the actual punnett square, but struggled on how to

get the punnett square set up. Walking the students through these problems multiple

times and doing a lab with these helped the students better understand where the units

had come from and why they are the way they are.

This week was a little tough for me. I am not the strongest when it comes to

math, but i love to do punnett squares. Trying to find different ways to teach the
students how to work through punnett squares and what the math would look like was a

little hard to do. I had to take time after school and before school the next day to

practice with my master to be able to feel more comfortable and better my own

understanding of the concepts. I had to also look up a lot of examples to be able to give

to the students so that they can see a variety of problems.

The lessons I had done this week have shown me that even a teacher needs to

study along with the students. Doing all the assignments the kids have to do and study

when the kids have to study will better myself as a teacher and find new ways to teach

the content. I have found teaching this way can help me better understand what the

students are going through, how long it will take for them to complete the assignment,

and possible complications the students might face. This will allow me to be more

prepared for the lesson and help students who are struggling. This week has also

taught me that practice really does help students better understand how to do specific

problems. Also allowing the students to practice often helps them remember the steps

for the test.

So far student teaching has been great, the students are getting used to me

coming into their classroom and implementing new classroom management skills. I am

struggling with getting my talkative class ready to learn, but once they are ready they

are good for the rest of the class period.