Reflecting on the First Teaching Lab of the Semester

Preparing for student teaching this semester includes taking AEE412: Methods of Teaching                             Agriculture and Environmental Science. This class includes a lab where we get the chance to practice teaching and can then reflect on what we learned from our and our peers' lessons. For the first lab, we were given material focusing on random topics that we had to teach. This switched the focus from content to our approach to teaching the material. 

The objective of the lesson I taught was to have students be able to describe the purpose of building castles in the Middle Ages and to label locations within a specific castle drawing. I struggled with figuring out how to teach this lesson because the assessment provided was not how I would have made an assessment for the lesson. It was difficult to teach to a test that I didn’t create. At the same time, however, having the test to refer to while creating my lesson plan was helpful because it clearly laid out exactly what the students needed to know by the time they were to take it. This emphasized the importance of creating assessments before lessons because it allows you the opportunity to ensure that you are covering everything thoroughly that will be on the exam.

Explaining the layout of the castle in my lesson

Starting the semester with this lesson was beneficial because we were able to focus on teaching style without the added layer of fitting into the curriculum of our courses. I will think of this lab every time I create a unit plan, reminding myself of the importance of creating assessments before jumping into creating lesson plans to make sure that I am set up for success going into the classroom in January.