Teaching Experience/ Reflection
Teaching Experience and Reflection
Sam and I decided to do a lesson plan involving the transformation of an insect through the programs of PowerPoint and Paint. This lesson plan in an animation lesson plan that allows the students to grasp the understanding of transformation, animation, and sound effects.
Overall, this was one of the best experiences I’ve had in a classroom so far. I’ve had many opportunities to help out in classrooms, but this is my first time being able to teach a lesson plan to a class with help from a classmate.
This was a great experience that required a lot of planning and prep-time. First Sam and I had to visit Holy Rosary and look at the programs their computers were dated with. Then we had to create example animations for the students to look at. We wrote down what we needed to accomplish each day with the students and the directions we would give them. Sometimes this required making handouts or cds with sounds or examples on them.
Here’s a look at what each day was like…
Visit to classroom/ Holy Rosary: this was an exciting visit. It is a very nice school and we found the student to be very respectful and productive. The computers however were very out of date. But they had the programs we needed to complete our lesson plan.
Day 1: On our first day we introduced ourselves and the project the class would be working on through the next few weeks. We introduced PowerPoint, and Paint; and many of the tools used in each one. By the end of the class period each student had at least 2 slides in PowerPoint: one of their transformation and one of their insect. We then made sure everyone saved their work into their shared folders.
- I though this day went very well. We were both a little nervous to see how much the students would actually get done, but they all ended up finishing what we wanted them to finish. No student gave us troubles and everyone was productive. Judie was very helpful and nice. She helped us whenever we had a question and let us teach the lesson. There was some difficulties throughout the period. We had to help a lot of students. We found the best way to help everyone was to go around the classroom from student to student. The students also had some troubles finding where to save their work. This surprised me because they are 5th graders and you would think they wouldn’t have troubles with that. Overall it was a very productive first day.
Day2: Today Sam and I just went over the tools in PowerPoint. We made sure they understood the tools to use in animating and how to duplicate and insert new slides. We expressed to the class that during this class period they would have to finish their animations or they wouldn’t have time to add sound next class time. By the end of the class time each student finished their work and re-saved it to their folder.
- This day also went by very well. The students had some troubles finding their saved work, but eventually we end finding everyone’s. Again we walked around the classroom helping each student and checking his or her work. Some students wanted to create more in Paint so that tended to be a disturbance. There was also a large range in skill level between the students. Some students had 80+ slides when others had 8 slides. However, it seemed almost everyone had at lest 15 slides by the end of the class period. We did have a student that missed the last class time so we got her caught up in no time. Finally, at the end of the day we collected some of the last class’s animations and put them on my flashdrive.
Day 3: This was our final day to work with the students and finish their animations. Our main focus was completing timings and adding sounds to their animations. However, adding sounds to their animations was not a great success. The time before Sam and I spent a wile messing with the sounds we brought in to make sure they worked. They worked great then. However, this time we were not so lucky. We found out that their computers were just not up-to-date enough for the sounds we brought in. In replace of the sounds we brought in for the students to use we let the students download a music file that was already distributed on their computers. At the end of the class just about every student had their timing and sounds finished and saved to their folder.
- This day was a lot of fun, but very stressful. It was a major bummer to see our sounds not work since that was the major project of the day. Even though they all ended up with a Beethoven’s music clip, they all learned the aspects of adding sound to an animation. They were loving it and were so amazed by what they created. Before we left we saved some of the animations to our dives and uploaded sounds to the students animations that didn’t have enough time to complete the task. We thanked Jodie for her time and she loved what we taught to the class. Sam was going to go back and give her the animations and information so she could finish the rest on her own.
Overall, this was such a rewarding and learning experience. The kids were great and listened to us well. Both Sam and I received the chance to teach a class about animation. Even if everything didn’t go as planed we learn and only improve our ideas for next time. If I were to do anything differently I would work with the sound aspect of this lesson plan more. I would make sure to the computers were up-to-date and had some kind of music program. I would also make sure to demonstrate more on the projecting screen hooked up to my computer. It was nice that both Sam and I were there but if it was just one of use we wouldn’t have that much time to go from student to student. Flipbooks would have been a neat addition to the project and would get their ideas flowing more. Lastly I would add one more class time to this lesson plan. We just needed a little more time to complete our overall goal.
Here are some of the animations the students we creating:
Download file
Download file
Download file