My First Experience Teaching A Mathematics Lesson
I felt prepared and it was finally time to teach my first mathematics lesson. For the previous two weeks I had been observing lessons in the maths department, and taking starters, so I was now eager to begin to teach my first lesson.
I would be teaching percentages to a top set year 8 class. I had my lesson plan ready to go, with some interactive activities that I hoped would go down well, but also as it was my first session, I was aiming to not do too much at once. The plan was to have a starter to settle the class, followed by the main teaching, and finally some time for independent work. I felt confident that the lesson would go down well.
Immediately, I saw the session would not go as smoothly as I hoped. It was the final period of the day, straight after lunch, but due to the weather the students had not been outside since the morning. When they arrived, the excess energy was showing, as I struggled to calm the class to welcome them.
The starter was on the board, and the students began to work. It was in a format they had seen before so the only issue was getting the class to settle and get on with work. It was time to put the behaviour management tricks I had picked up into practice. Needless to say, they did not have the same effect as they had for their regular teacher, but eventually they did settle.
This theme continued, at every opportunity the class would erupt into conversation, meaning it took longer than expected to get through the teaching section. Promisingly, however, through the use of whiteboards I could see the whole class picking up the ideas which I was teaching. I thought to myself “once I get them to listen to me, this isn’t too bad”. Unfortunately, getting the class to listen continued to be an issue. With just five minutes left I was finally able to get the class on to their independent work. As the bell went, the class finally fell silent as I instructed no one would leave until I had total silence, and then I dismissed them.
Overall, the objectives of the lesson were met, however it was clear the main challenge would be to learn how to calm a class. Most importantly I feel I learned a lot from taking the class. It was far from perfect, as should be expected for a first class, but it highlighted gaps in my ability, which I have since been able to focus on. Since this first experience I have managed to maintain aspects of the class which went well, while focusing on improving other aspects for future classes. Since this, classes go much more smoothly and with far fewer interruptions, mainly by keeping on top of the class before they feel they can get to a high level of disruption.
By Joseph Livesey
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Message from the Scholarship Team
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