Today was the final teaching practice for me. If I had my way, I would have remained in bed. Firstly, I was very sick and the simplest of tasks now became a major chore. Secondly today marked the anniversary of when my father was buried, and it also marked the birthday of the man who filled the gap when I lost my biological dad (but he too is now deceased). Today I needed all the help of God to get up, get dressed and show up. I guess my humble prayers were answered.
I arrived at the school and realized that the co operating teacher was going to be absent for the day. Generally I would not have been too bothered about something like that, but based on how I was feeling, I felt unable to adequately fulfill the demands of that day. Thankfully, by some miracle, I began to feel better and I was ready to face the day.
My partner was concerned about what we would do with the children for the entire day and I told her I would think of something. Instead of attending the assembly, I sat and drafted a schedule for the day.
We had planned to do our first lesson after the students had breakfast. All was set for the lesson to begin when suddenly, we were greeted with very loud noise from outside. What ever form of work was taking place outside of our classroom caused a major disruption. We were forced to abandon the lesson because the noise was too great. We allowed the children to read or colour quietly because any activity which involved talking would have been counter productive.
We tried to begin the Social Studies Lesson again after Recess. All was well for a while but then we were greeted with the noise again. We were once again forced to temporarily put our lesson on pause. I was slightly upset, but I did not allow it to affect me. Some students were afraid of the noise and we had to help calm them down. I once again experienced a part of teaching that is not defined in the curriculum. I was glad to be able to bring some measure of comfort to the little ones.
The students’ previous knowledge for this lesson was more than we anticipated, but we were careful not to repeat the mistakes we made in the previous lessons. We moved ahead with the class instead of dragging on certain areas. This was another satisfactory lesson in that the students stayed on task and their behavior was more controlled. By this time, the students had formed a natural bond with us, and we were able to use this to our advantage.
If I were to improve this lesson, I would have a large simulated map to better help the children understand the approximate locations of the places we were teaching them about.
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