Wow! This past week has been pretty insane!

Not only did I host a student from Spain,

but I also planned and taught my first lesson of the year at WTCES! Honestly, it has been pretty
tough to keep up with my VTFT obligations and work as I ran around the city frantically
completing multiple activities with my exchange student, but somehow I managed. Although, I
did fall behind on a great bit of other work of which I’m still feeling the repercussions of. Sadly,
the only thing that I wasn’t able to take my student to was my interning 3rd grade class at
WTCES. The schedules unfortunately didn’t line up. I thought it would be especially cool since
half of my students are ESL/ELL. It would’ve definitely made for an awesome learning
opportunity for my students.
Currently, I’m ecstatic to have finally been able to teach the first lesson that I planned
myself and I’m looking forward to teaching the remaining seven throughout this year. Although,
I’m pretty nervous about having to record and watch my next lesson. Oh gosh, it’s going to be so
embarrassing, Anyways, my first lesson was on ancient Egypt. I was tasked with creating an
introduction lesson to the unit, specifically on geographical features of ancient Egypt and how
the Egyptians adapted to their environment. Coincidentally, my mom knows somebody from
Egypt who gifted me a statue of the Great Sphinx of Giza along with a piece of papyrus
illustrating Queen Nefertiti. I used these for the introduction of my lesson as I passed around the
artifacts for my students to see. At the suggestion of Mrs. Lewis, I had them do an “I see…I
think…I wonder” on sticky notes. After each student had seen artifacts and finished writing, I
randomly selected some of the sticky notes from each section and discussed what they had
observed. Next, I moved onto a slideshow with pictures relating to important topics on ancient
Egypt and proceeded to go through the slideshow presenting the information and answering any
questions from the students. Lastly, I ended with a coloring map of África where I colored in the
key geographical features surrounding Egypt, as my students followed along.
Ultimately, and to my surprise, my first lesson went relatively smoothly. Although I felt
kind of iffy about it, Mrs. Lewis reassured me that I did fine. I realized that I needed to continue
working on my confidence, especially when it comes to whole group lessons, and my ability to
read 3rd grade handwriting, which was probably the hardest part of this lesson if I’m being
honest…haha! But seriously, it is definitely a skill because sometimes I have no clue what
they’re writing. Well, now it’s time to begin my next lesson that I will be teaching in January.
This one will be on character traits, so I’m going to have to brush up on my narrating skills.