My First Lesson Ever!

I was really nervous about teaching my first lesson ever to a group of 21 fourth graders, but Alyssa and I knocked it out of the park!  The kids had so much fun playing with the soil in the activity that we did, and I could not believe how well they listened to our lesson and stayed interested the entire time.  We were both really nervous about how it was going to go because we had never given a lesson to a real classroom before, but now that we have one under our belt, we will not be nearly as nervous coming into our next lesson this coming week.  It was hard to gauge how the class was going to respond to us as teachers or to our style of teaching in general, or how interested they were going to be with the information that we were teaching them.  I think it is definitely helpful that the students do not get to learn science on a regular basis because it makes it especially interesting to them when we come in to teach our science lessons, and it is something different and fun for them compared to the typical day that they spend in their classroom with the same teacher every week. 
It was a huge help that Alyssa and I met up and practiced our lesson a number of times, pretending as if we were in the classroom teaching the lesson to our students, because it got us to think about the potential problems and issues that may have arisen if we were to approach our lesson in that specific manner.  We were able to designate who was going to teach what parts of the lesson, and we were on the same page the entire time so that we could both jump in and help if one of us couldn't find our words or got confused (which didn't happen as a result of our collaboration).  We both knew what was coming next and what direction the lesson was going to take at each step, and I think that this connection was apparent in our deliverance of the lesson.  I am really going to enjoy working with a partner for these science lessons because we both offer our own unique teaching styles, and can learn from each others mistakes and successes. 
One part of the lesson that could have been a disaster was when we were having the students wash their hands when they were finished observing the soil.  The teacher just bought a brand new bottle of gingerbread soap, and the students could not get enough of it!  They were washing their hands three times over again, and the line quickly built up and could have easily gone out of control if we did not see this happening and were not there to intervene and move the kids along back to their seats.  Next time, we will be sure to think of a more orderly way of getting the students to wash their hands so that this type of potential disaster can be avoided.  Luckily, the students were really well behaved and responded well to our directions, but this level of excitement that comes from having new teachers in the room, along with a new and exciting topic, could have easily led them in a different direction.