Reflection of this Lesson:
This was my very first lesson that I taught. It went well overall, but there were some areas that I need to address for my next lessons. Firsly, I do not know the students well enough yet to understand all of their needs. For example, there was one student who struggles with writing, which I was unaware of. This being said, when this student struggles, they tend to act out. So he acted out a bit during this lesson because he was frustrated with his ability to write. I moved him to work on his own because he was being very distracting to others. Afterwards, my cooperating teacher told me that he often needs help with his writing and that is why he acted the way he did. Antoher student in my class is also close to non-verbal and they struggle with their fine motor skills as well. I had never taken this into consideration for my lesson, so cutting paper, writing, and colouring were difficult tasks for this student.
Now that I have the knowledge that I have from this lesson, I am wanting to focus on reaching the needs of all the students within my next lessons. I am going to ensure that all of the students are able to showcase their knwoledge in a way that best suits them. This could mean that I scribe for some students, have sentence starters for them, have them draw pictures instead of writing, etc. I am eager to see where the rest of my lessons take me from this point on!
I really enjoyed teaching this lesson. The students were very engaged in it, and they were able to work at their individual level. Some students wrote words or phrases, while others drew pictures to explain their thinking. My cooperating teacher loved this lesson as well, and she even invited the principle to come and check it out while the students were working. I felt very accomplished during this lesson. The students got to share their posters that they made and they had the opportunity to explain their life cycle to their classmates which reinforced their learnings of the lesson. Overall, the lesson went very well, and I would definitely do it again!
Visual Arts Lesson – Primary and Secondary Colours
This lesson was very interesting. It required a lot of set up and I had to anticipate many things that might happen or go wrong throughout. Luckily enough, I had time to set up all of my paint trays, set out my paint brushes, and set out paper as well. I wanted the students to move as little as possible throughout to avoid something possibly spilling. It went very smooth for the most part. The only thing that got difficult was at the end of the lesson, many students were done and they did not want to help anyone else clean up. My cooperating teacher suggested that I assign roles to students who were done early for next time and I think that is a great idea.
The lesson itself went very well. Majority of the students were able to finish their painting and I think that they learned a lot about paint and mixing colours. Some students came to a dillema as they used all of one colour to make another colour, and then had none of the primary colour left to mix another colour. When this happened, I was able to provide more paint for the students, but I reminded them that they should not be using ALL of one colour to mix another colour. A few students also did not follow the directions of using the primary colours FIRST and then making their secondary colours. This was also a good lesson for those students, as I stated before I started that they should paint with their primary colours first, because you cannot bring them back once you have mixed them.
Overall, I think the students enjoyed this lesson. Their art works turned out very nice and I am pleased with how it went overall.