Teaching Lesson 1

I had my first teaching experience as my course practicum on the 24th of May, 2023 in a reading class. I arrived early to class with my co-student teacher and before the class began our sponsor teacher asked us to draw the map of Canada on the board with the major provinces and their capital for an activity later during the lesson. I wonder to myself which kind of activity could this be. I didn’t really see myself to involve activities in my lesson because it was something I wasn’t used to and had not seen before during the times I taught in Ghana or the times I was a student.

After the students settled in, myself and my co-student teacher, Rajneet was introduced by our sponsor teacher and we shared a little about ourselves, where we from and why we were there teaching and how long the students will be seeing us. The students were receptive, but they seemed a little confused, and that made me nervous. I kept thinking to myself, were the students going to like me, what about my accent? Will the students really understand me? and many more.

The lesson began immediately after the introduction, homework from the previous lesson was taken and the warmup activity with the map began. Rajneet and I asked the students questions about Canada and the student group with the right answers gets to travel from Kamloops through the provinces across Canada.

Students participated fully and they were really excited about the activity. This changed my perception about involving activities in a lesson. Since I wasn’t used to activities in a lesson I thought activities during lessons would be a distraction but actually I was wrong. 

The 2nd half continued after a short break and our sponsor teacher chose a different environment for the story reading. The students were calmer and comfortable and participated fully during our discussions with them. I also realized students enjoy a change of classroom set up and feel more comfortable when that happens.The class ended on time and lesson pacing was right on track.

I learnt so much on my first day as a practicum teacher and I realized students didn’t have name tags, so it was difficult to identify the students or call them out, so Rajneet and I decided to make name tags for the students on our next visit. I’m really looking forward to my next teaching lesson.