Today I spent an hour at the Muncie Fairgrounds participating in the Living Lightly Fair. This free event for elementary-aged students was designed to inform students of sustainable sources of energy. I volunteered an hour of my time to conduct sessions where students learned about solar energy and built a solar powered car. This lesson is a revision of a lesson that I taught this past March to a class of second graders (view post about this experience).

The dynamics of these children was very different from those of the second grade class. In this event, the children ranged in age from five to twelve years old. It was difficult to teach them about solar energy in such a way that they were all interested and engaged in learning about solar power. I also had difficulty keeping students moving at the same pace. Older students completed the assembly of their car long before those of younger ages. I was surprised to see how easily the older students were able to look at the model car and assemble theirs by analyzing the structure of the model.

I thoroughly enjoyed teaching this activity to students. The atmosphere was more relaxed than in a regular classroom. The students also seemed to enjoy the activity more. They had chosen to participate instead of being coerced. The goal I (and all teachers) want to attain is gaining students' attention and interest in learning without making them feel forced into completing some task that they perceive as pointless.

This marks the end of the unit that Brock and I taught at Driver Middle School in Winchester. It has been a great experience to get in the classroom and have first-hand experience teaching students. As I graded the quizzes I noticed patterns in the questions that were missed and the incorrect answers that the students put. This indicates to me that we didn't cover that material thoroughly enough because the students obviously hadn't learned it.

The students gave Brock and I very good evaluations. Most of them enjoyed us as teachers and rated us fairly high on the scale that we presented them with. They also enjoyed the unit. Their favorite part was actually flying the Delta Darts. I enjoyed watching them fly the Delta Darts.

As a project I think this is an excellent experience for all pre-service educators to go through. Developing a short unit (more than one day) and teaching in a school is more beneficial than teaching one lesson in a short amount of time. It also helped having a partner available who could help carry the teaching load. I realize that I won't have this luxury in my classroom. However, it is beneficial to have the experience in the classroom and focus initially on teaching the students while having someone else to cover the things that I may have missed.

I am more excited about student teaching and practicum than I was originally. I learned a lot by teaching this unit. I plan on taking this information and using it to made the necessary adjustments for me to become a better teacher.

Today was the day that the sixth graders flew their Delta Darts. They all enjoyed the flights very much and were engaged in the activity. Brock and I had to spend a little more time finishing preparing the planes for flight than we had planned. Consequently, the students were only able to fly their planes two times. Because of the space (the cafeteria) that we were in many of the planes had collisions with walls, ceiling lights, and basketball hoops. Unfortunately, if the plane hit an object in the right spot, the plane broke and was sometimes rendered non-flyable. Some students were disappointed in this. We could have used the idea that they might break during flight as a motivator to encourage them to build higher-quality models. In the end, there was only one group that met the minimum flight requirement.

Today was a fun day. The students thoroughly enjoyed flying their planes. Brock and I had fun watching them fly and seeing their excitement. Tomorrow will be the real test of how much they actually learned. I'm hoping that Brock and I taught the content well enough that the students are able to meet most, if not all, of the objectives. However, tomorrow will tell us the answer to that question.

I personally believe that today's instruction went much better than yesterday's. As was suggested, Brock and I made a demo version of the Delta Dart partially assembled on the cardboard and tracing paper. We then had students gather around the demo while we demonstrated the process and steps to finish fabrication. The questions that were asked today were somewhat repetitive but nothing near the amount we had yesterday. One of the things that I learned today, however, was that lesson plans can come in very handy. We didn't have a full lesson plan for today since we hadn't planned on taking two days to fabricate the Delta Darts. We had drafted a mini lesson plan in which we outlined what we wanted to accomplish for the day. The difficulty came in knowing approximately how much time we should spend on each task. We ended up spending too much time on finishing gluing and waiting until each student was ready for the "next big step" before proceeding. As a teacher it is important for me to know when I can move forward and know that most of the students are not only ready for the next step but that those who aren't quite there yet will be able to catch up. All in all, today's instruction went very well. I am looking forward to watching the students fly their Delta Darts on Monday.

This was my the third day of instruction at Driver Middle School. Today, Brock and I had the students fabricate Delta Dart models. Two questions that Brock and I got asked several times were "How do I lay these peices?" and "Am I gluing this right?" One of the things that we could have done differently would have been to model gluing the peices of balsa wood onto the template. It would have been helpful if Brock and I had made a model of the parts laid out on the template and then demonstrated glueing the peices together. This way, the students would have been able to see what we were asking of them and would not have all had the same questions.

One thing that was brought to my attention today was my tendency to use the word "okay." I tend to say this when I am checking to make sure that everyone is still following along and understanding what I am saying. I wait to make sure that there are no major problems before continuing on to the next step. I need to reduce the amount that I use the word "okay" to make sure students are still on the same page as me. I also agreed with this person when they mentioned that I spend a lot of my time teaching with my hands in my pockets. Putting my hands in my pockets is an automatic action for me. I realize that I need to work on this characteristic as it conveys the wrong message not only to people I am conversing with but also to students.

Today's instruction went well, overall. There were things that we could have done differently but that is to be expected. I am glad that I have this opportunity to immerse myself in the teaching environment and still have a multiple assessments of my performance and abilities. I'm looking forward to tomorrow's instruction where students will finish fabricating their Delta Darts and begin preparing them for flight on Monday.

Today was the second day that Brock and I taught sixth graders at Driver Middle School. Once again today was interesting and provided to a valuable learning experience. The students remembered a surprising amount of information from yesterday's class. They seemed to be more comfortable with Brock and I just was we were more comfortable with them.

One thing that I found very interesting was the simple fact that most of them appeared to be enthused about learning. In my mind I have inadvertently gotten this image that all students in all schools sit at a desk with a blank look on their face. In order to counteract this response, my courses emphasize student engagement. I'm not saying that it's bad to advocate for student engagement. On the contrary I think its great that they emphasize the topic. What I am trying to point out is that not all students are disinterested about learning. I think its easy for us to pictures students staring at us blankly while we feel like baboons standing in the front of the room talking about something they couldn't care less about.

These students have been very active and engaged in the class. I'm really excited to see what happens tomorrow as we spend the entire class period fabricating the Delta Darts. I'm not quite sure how the whole situation will work out but I think its going to interesting to see how a hands-on activity will help them become more involved in the class and also force them to construct some of their own learning.

Today was my first day of teaching a five day unit at Driver Middle School. It was a good experience. The instruction went well and the students were very responsive. My partner (Brock) and I did find that we could have planned better. Our delivery was a little awkward but that isn't anything that couldn't have been fixed with a simple run through prior to class. I am interested in seeing how much information students remember from today's lecture when we review with them tomorrow. It will be the first chance we get to see how well our methods and instructional strategies worked with these students.

Today, I taught a class of second graders at Storer Elementary about solar energy. The students have been learning about solar energy. My task was to work with a partner to develop a lesson that would provide the students with a hands-on activity where they could see solar energy at work. We chose to have students build solar-powered cars.

The lesson went very well. Although I noticed things that could have been done differently. One thing that I struggled with while teaching the students was maintaining their attention. As I was showing them the step-by-step process of constructing the cars, they were progress through the steps at different rates. After I waited for all groups to get done some students would revert to talking with others. I had to take time to get their attention back before I proceeded with the next step. If I were to teach this lesson again, I think I might take a different approach by having students watch me complete a set of tasks and then having them complete the same set. This would save time and also keep the students' attention.

Another thing that I found very interesting was how actively they participated in class discussion. I have spent so many years out of the elementary classroom that I have forgotten how much energy the students have. It's my perception that elementary students have the motivation to learn. However, its a matter of the teacher being able to direct that motivation to academic and beneficial goals.

This teaching experience was definitely a good one. I felt very unprepared for the lesson but the actual instruction went very smoothly. I did have one student ask me if airplanes used solar energy in any way. I have no knowledge of this but that doesn't mean it isn't in R&D. If anyone has any ideas about this question I'd be extremely interested to hear about them. Just post a comment with your responses and ideas.