My first experiences of teaching Maths
My first experience of teaching a maths lesson was to my peers at University as if they were a middle set year 7 class. We were supposed to go to a school and do this as a micro-teaching exercise, but due to COVID this wasn’t possible. Having now taught my first lesson at my first placement school, I have to admit, standing at the front of the room and teaching 9 of my peers was far more nerve-wracking than being at the front of the room with 30 year 7s looking at you, relying on you for directions. From how I felt doing my micro teach to my peers, I thought I was going to be a lot more nervous teaching my first lesson than I was. I surprised myself with how relaxed I felt stood at the front of the room teaching for the first time. I thoroughly enjoyed every second and the hour passed so quickly, not how I remembered it sitting in a lesson.
It was exciting from the start planning a whole lesson there is so much to think about and so much to do yet so little time. To start planning takes a while but it’s already becoming an easier process. Throughout I have been given free reign of what tasks I would like to do with my class, which has been good; it has given me chance to explore what is available and use different task types to what they usually see, and this has really helped with engagement and keeping students focused. This really helped me with my biggest worry, which was behaviour management, and I was very relieved to find out it came naturally and wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be. I find when I think about lessons, I overthink everything as well as all the worst-case scenarios so when everything ran smoothly, and all students were engaged, I was really surprised and felt positive for my next time teaching.
By Rebecca Roper
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