Virtual Teaching

There were many mixed emotions with teaching online. I was very hesitant to teach online the first time around, but it was a lot easier to do the second time around when I taught my whole group math lesson. With teaching online, it made me realize how much I missed being in the classroom setting. I truly miss working with and being around children. With teaching online, my lessons felt rushed and kind of "to the point". It was difficult for me to pretend that there were students around asking and answering questions throughout my lesson. It was a lot less nerve wrecking teaching online than in my field experience classroom, even with my first lesson taught virtually. I would have loved to have taught all of my lessons in field experience because I feel it is a completely different experience in the classroom with actual students than virtually. What I did like about teaching virtually was having two of my peers observe me teach, and observing my peers as well. It was nice hearing their feedback on where I went well and areas of improvement in my lessons and teaching. This was a true learning experience however. I now know how to accommodate lessons and virtually teach them in case I ever need to do so in my future career. I do hope that this doesn't last too long so we can all teach in an actual classroom setting.

Virtual Teaching

Teaching in the field is something that I really missed this semester. I believe that I had really good lessons that the students in the class would enjoy and learn from. Virtual teaching was something that took a couple tries to get used to. The first one was a bit awkward as we were seeing how things were going to play out. By my second virtual teaching, I felt a lot more confident. Receiving feedback from peers as well as Dr. Kelly was extremely beneficial when planning for my next lesson to teach. As my lessons progressed, so did the amount of interactive activities and differentiation I included. I really made sure my lessons were made specifically for the students I had in class. Before actually teaching and being assessed, I would practice my lesson with my favorite stuffed animals. This helped me with the flow of the lesson. Sometimes I would notice that I could explain something better or show a better demonstration of how to do something. One of my favorite lessons I taught was my WG math lesson on place value. This is something my CT was working on with her students and something that they needed extra support in. I made the lesson engaging and fun for the students. I believe this lesson was my best lesson because I included a lot of opportunities for students to interact with one another and included differentiation for certain students I knew would need more support. Overall, this was a very unexpected and unusual circumstance but I am extremely grateful to have still taught my lessons virtually and practice how I can make changes to these lessons for different students.