Our Time to Shine!

   This week was finally my group's turn to teach! We were all so nervous and spent numerous hours rehearsing our lessons, but it was all worth it because both lessons went pretty well; the worst part was that we ran out of time both days! The first day, we did direct instruction and after every couple of slides, we dedicated a slide to review what was on the last couple of slides to check for understanding. We created stoplights for the students to use while answering questions to say whether they agree or disagree, which everyone seemed to love. There were some students who didn't take the materials seriously, but they were effective for the most part. We broke up the two different topics by doing a guided practice activity where the students created foliated and non-foloiated rocks using clay and sequins. The students had fun with it and they were good about putting it away for the rest of the lesson, which was such a relief! We had to rush through the second part of the lesson and the guided practice for the rock cycle, so the students were all a little confused. If we would've had a couple of extra minutes to explain the cycle better, then I think the activity would've gone much smoother. We also didn't have much time left to explain the independent practice to them, but it was six simple questions about what we learned and they had their note sheets, so they were able to figure it out.

   Our inquiry lesson was cut even shorter because the students came in late, but they also had to leave early, which we didn't find out until we only had 10 minutes left. Other than our time constraints, everything went relatively smoothly. The students loved being able to go through the rock cycle using crayons. I stayed in the front of the room for a majority of the inquiry lesson because that's where we had the crayon maker plugged in. One or two students came up at a time to see that the crayon maker was melting the pieces of crayon that I put in. I asked every student that came up to me to tell me which process was happening on top (melting) and what happens when you pour the liquid into the mold (cooling), then they told me what type of rock was forming and they sat back down. The students all thought that the crayon maker was really cool and wanted their own. We ended up running out of time of course, so not every student was able to do the metamorphic stage. We also had a whole closure planned out, but we didn't have enough time to do it. I wish we would've brought more sharpeners for the students, so they could've gone through the sedimentary rock part quicker and we weren't have been so pressed for time.

   Overall, both days went relatively well and we're all so glad that we made it through the week and can finally relax, especially since we all had midterms this week too!