First Teaching Experience

     I taught my first science lesson this past Wednesday in my first grade classroom.  Overall, I feel my lesson went very well and I felt successful with the class by the end of the lesson.  I was a little nervous about not having control with the kids, especially with a science hands-on activitiy involving water, but when I was teaching I was very confident that I kept control the entire time.  At the beginning of the lesson, I provided clear instructions and expectations for students by making sure that we reviewed the rules of the classroom and the rules of the lesson.  During group time at the beginning of the lesson, the students were very engaged and really enjoyed that I used volunteers to demonstrate what they would be doing with their own objects and with their observation sheets.  I feel that I used instructional strategies in a logical sequence because i spent 10 minutes for the pre lesson (talking and showing kids what they would be doing), 10 minutes for them to try the activity on their own and in groups, and 10 minutes conclusion, (although I could have used a little more time) where we made a graph as a whole group and talked about our observations.  I also used appropriate questioning techniques because I asked them a lot of questions on what the rules were and if they explain to me why we were doing the activity and their findings.
       The things that I would have improved on were explaining more rules about not splashing the water or dropping their objects from a high height because it would splash water onto their desks.  Also, I would have put more emphasis on the conclusion part and describing the objects and why they did/didnt float, but near the end, I was running out of time.  Also, I walked around and observed during their small group experiments, but I wasnt able to devote much time to each student.  Being my first formal lesson in a classroom, though, I felt very confident and really enjoyed the student's reactions!