Unfortunately, I am already behind on blogging due to the craziness of last week. Nevertheless, I figured I would post something anyway. It is certainly better late than never!

Week two orientation could probably be summed up in about one word: stressful. You think you have worked hard until you are asked to design lesson plans and curriculum materials from scratch following a very specific lesson plan template. Then, you realize that the phrase “hard work” has a completely new meaning. Despite the sleepless nights, we managed to make it through the week and learned a lot in the process.

We learned significant amounts on how to incorporate structured and guided practice within the classroom. We also learned that all students learn best when they travel through the “say, see, do” cycle multiple times throughout the lesson. For those of you who don’t know what a “say, see, do” cycle is, it is basically a way of teaching that moves in a spiral formation. The teacher introduces the topic, gives an example by showing and then asks the students to actively participate in the process (do.) I have to admit that writing a lesson plan this way is slightly tedious, but I certainly understood their intentions. In addition to the structured and guided practice we learned the importance of VIP’s or written steps with visuals to remember the process of something.

Although I could blog about lesson plan formatting forever, I want to move on to the best moment of the teaching experience which was our “mock teaching lesson.” We were asked to prepare one of our lessons in advance and teach it to the seven other teachers who were also teaching the same subject in our department. It was a nerve-wrecking experience, but extremely worthwhile. It was also interesting to observe the other teachers and give each other feedback on what we were doing right and what we were doing wrong.

At the end of the week, we had painted over 200 murals to completely cover the walls of the middle school, we had endured multiple team challenges and survived a week of only getting a total of four hours of sleep per night. However, tomorrow is the first day of Summerbridge and I am now refreshed and ready to show some spirit! It will be awesome to see our hard work in action.