Two Areas That Still Need Improvement

After viewing the notes left by my guest teacher (a retired middle school teacher) I have found that I have two areas that still need improvement. Firstly, it has come to my attention that I need to rethink my expectations for my students. Secondly, but equally as important, I find I am still having a hard time with classroom management. Overall, in both of these areas, as well as others, I have seen improvement, overall in my teaching methods, and will now focus my attention more on these two areas of improvement. With expectations, I need to remember that these are sixth-grade students and even though I may understand how to read a topographical map that does not automatically mean that they will. If I just hand out a worksheet about topographical maps to my students and expect them to simultaneously understand how to complete the activity I am dead wrong. For example the Mount Helena survival game, took place the day after students learned how to read topographical maps so I started the day off thinking that the students would remember how to read the map and what a contour line was since they’d learned it yesterday. The truth was that my beliefs and the student's
During the first two periods of the day I lost, and the guest teacher timed it, it took me about 4 minutes to explain how the students couldn’t crawl down the mountain, light a fire, or eat each other to survive. By taking away all of their options all they were left with was the instructions, texting the 5 hints to your location to the EMTs. I haven’t quite found my balance between being too ridged (do this, do that, drill sergeant like) and being too soft (allowing the students to go through every possible way they can get around my instructions). At the moment I feel like I’ve got things under control and that the Bunny Trails have a