Weekend after Raven’s Feast seems to have sent most of the staff to the infirmary.  Out of the 10 or so people working here, 6 of them were sick, and another had the day off.  So most of the time I spent alone at my desk, in an eerily silent space.  It was nice to have some quiet work time to myself, but it just feels weird being alone in an environment I’m normally surrounded by people in.  Mondays and Tuesdays the gallery is closed, so even ambient visitor sound wasn’t around to make me feel connected.  So it was an odd day in comparison to the others I have had so far.

Big thing today was completing the powerpoints for the lessons I’ve been making.  Using what I’ve learned in my high school practicum, I used visuals, short content slides, and provided direct and informative commands when explaining activities.  Some of the powerpoints are simply instructional commands for students to be able to read what they need to do for activities, but others have several visuals as well as animations.  There is also lots of room for students to discuss with one another, and have discussion as a class about certain questions relating to the topic of the lesson.  I found students were much more involved in lessons if they had opportunity to talk about questions with each other and the class, rather than just telling them what they need to know.  The idea of tapping into the things they might already know about a topic, rather than simply dictating information to them.

For social studies, I found often that discussion was the best way to assess student understanding as well.  Discussion before content to see what they already know, and discussion during and after the lesson to make sure they’re grasping the information, as well as being able to take away something from the class at the end of the period.  All of this is hopefully included in my lessons, the only problem I’m having now is that written down these lesson plans look alright, but I don’t get to teach them myself which is weird.