Combatting Stress!

Tuesday was quite a day!

My teacher and I agreed that I would be able have about an hour to complete a science lesson that I had been planning. I spent a great deal of time prepping for this lesson and I was so excited to see the kids' reactions. I planned on opening the lesson using sign language and spending a few minutes reflecting on how different life would be for each student in class if they lost their hearing (i.e. how would their favorite hobbies/activities be different, what would school be like, would people treat them differently, etc.). I thought this would be an interesting way to start a lesson because the CMT prompt last Tuesday was to describe how life would be different if students woke up one inch tall. After sharing ideas, I would move onto how the human ear functions and feeling vibrations in our throats by humming in different pitches (we would talk about how people who cannot hear are unable to hear the vibrations even though they can feel the vibrations). I then planned for us to move into a hands-on activity using rulers - the students would investigate the range of vibrations and pitches of sound the rulers made while hanging different lengths over the edges of desks.

Most of this went well...

Except for the fact that my one hour time slot was slashed down to thirty minutes!!!!

Thirty minutes?!? How do you squeeze anything into thirty minutes? Especially everything I just described! I panicked and immediately became stressed out! If I were an experienced teacher, I would immediately be able to modify the lesson to be appropriate for a thirty minute time slot. However, I felt the extreme pressure of the clock ticking and both the teacher and my supervisor watching me/taking notes. I think I did a fair job given the circumstances, but I certainly do not look forward to that EVER happening again!