We are more than half way through our fall field experience. My partner and I are assigned to a sixth grade classroom in north Orem. Our university supervisor did her second observation today.The unit we are teaching is about WWII. We've taught two lessons designed to deliver content. To day we wanted to help the students gain a deeper understanding of the things they learned and think creatively about them. We used a technique we learned in class called synectics. With synectics you ask the students to describe the topic, and create analogies (a candle is like WWII because.....), then you choose one of the analogies and have them make a personal analogy (if you were a candle how would you feel?), Then you identify feelings in the list that seem contradictory, Then you choose one of those pair of feelings and create a new analogy, then have the students relate the new analogy back to the original topic. It's kind of a scary activity because you don't know what they'll come up with and you're never sure how you will guide them through it if they get stuck. So our supervisor observed the first part of our synectics activity. The teacher took the class to library and we talked with the supervisor. She was (this sounds very corny) teary eyed. I don't remember exactly what she said, something about witnessing a true learning experience. She said she didn't have anything to teach us about synectics, it was the best synectics activity she had ever seen. So I am basking in the feeling of triumph. I couple of times this week I was really anxious about our lessons and assessments. Now I realy feel like I can be a teacher who makes a difference. Once earlier this week I wondered to myself what I would do If I turned out to be a terrible teacher. I was afraid I'd have to keep teaching because I needed the income, even though I was terrible. So today I'm not so worried, I'm a natural. So I had to blog about it so that next time I'm worried about my eventual terribleness I can read this and feel better.
1 comment:
So I was just reading this post again, and I don't think she said it was the best synectics activity she had ever seen.
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