Ms. Sweeten's First Day of Class Lab

The past two weeks the PSU AgEd 23 cohort has been learning how to adapt a lesson to reach a broader range of students. We got to experience this first hand in our lab this week when we taught ten minuets from our class expectations lesson.

During our lab this week my peers and I got to show our own creative ideas on how to get to know our students and share our class expectations. In my ten minute lesson I had students write three things about themselves on a notecard without their names. Once they were all done I collected the notecards and read them out loud and had students guess who the card belonged to. I found that this activity was a really good way to get to know students however, some students might not be able to write things about themselves. A way to try and accommodate those students is to have them share just one fact about them if that is all they can think of because that way they still get a chance to participate or I can ask them a question to get to know them better.

During my lesson we also talked about classroom expectations/rules. I think that it is really important to set the rules early on to keep a well maintained class. I shared my expectations for students as well for myself as the teacher. Students were asked to then share any expectations that they wanted to add to the list. From this activity I learned it can be difficult getting students to want to participate. Something I would keep in mind is that if students are struggling coming up with ideas for this it is ok to have them pair up with another student and work together.

Being a flexible teacher is something that I am going to have to work on, but when trying to figure out how to accommodate to more students it is important.