Pedagogy Book- Second Year by Dana Asulin

This year was incredible for me! I finally got to achieve my dream and start teaching in Elementary school. I had some experience before, but this year was extremely different and challenging. All the assignments we had to submit for the course, sitting for hours creating lesson plans and trying to make any lesson engaging for the students, was not an easy task at all at first, but as the time passed it was so much easier.

In this course, I learned the most useful tips for teaching any kind of lesson. We learned how to teach writing, speaking, reading, and listening and my lecturer, Jennifer, guided us through every step of teaching a lesson. It wasn’t easy at all to teach the four skills but with the help of my lecturer, I learned some activities that would help the students.

For example for speaking, we can divide the students into couples or groups and make them do the talking more than us. We can also ask the students to read aloud a story and by that combine two skills at once! For writing, we can ask the students to rewrite a story they learned, describing an interest such as a hobby and more.

I learned that as many skills they use in one lesson the better.

At first, I learned to divide the lessons into three parts- opening, body, and closure.

In the opening, I learned that we have to use some activity to draw the students into the lesson and the subject so they would be concentrated and engaged. I loved to open my lessons each time with a different visual aid such as a PowerPoint presentation, a game, or a song. I love this part so much because I could be creative and use my imagination. I could also see that the students really enjoyed every lesson because I used them. Every student wanted to participate and when the games or the presentations were over they wanted me to play them again.

In the body of the lesson, I also used the book but I tried my best not to focus on it too much so, in addition, I passed my students a creative activity so they will work and won’t get bored such as worksheets, a game or a group work.

The closure of the lessons was a little hard for me because sometimes I didn’t have enough time to do it or the students were already off the edge and wanted to go for a break.

So as for next year, I would like to learn how to accomplish better the closure of the lesson. How to assess my students’ knowledge of the topic I have taught and to sum up and ask the right questions. I would also like to learn how to deal with classroom behavior. It is an issue I had this year and it really bothered me and was so hard for me to control it. I know that with experience and time I will get better and will know how to react to different situations but I would like to learn and get help more with this issue next year.

I am so grateful for this year. I have learned so much from my lecturer and when I am looking back I am so proud of my process. Every hour of sitting and investing in the lesson planning was so worth it. I am proud that I didn’t give up on myself when it was hard and that I was attentive to myself. I took every problem that I had and only learned from it. It was so helpful to see clearly the structure of the lesson in front of me and know exactly the goal of the lesson. I will definitely keep using it in the future. I got to work with amazing cooperating teachers and got to know the most amazing classroom. I certainly won’t forget this year.

Here are some photos with memories that will always remain in my heart. 🙂