Today was our first lesson on simple machines in third grade, and I have decided that simple machines are a lot more complicated than I originally thought. We had to begin with energy and work, and then connect those to simple machines. The students didnt really seem to grasp what we were saying, and thats because I am not used to thinking on a student level. While planning, everything made sense in my college brain: point A connects to point B and that is that. However, its like these students need to see every single connection and be walked through it, so they need to be walked from point A to A1/2 to B. There cant be any gray areas at all.
Luckily, Jen was observing today and was able to help us debreif about what went wrong. This was the first day, so we have a lot to think about in planning out the next lesson, but I think it is really helpful to have this feedback before we teach 4 more lessons rather than after.