Lesson On People In China

Yesterday, was my last day at my practicum placement. It was also the day I taught my last lesson. As a class I had the students read a passage on the population of China. They learned that population growth was a major problem in China and because of that they had to adopt the One-Child Policy. We spoke about the advantages and disadvantages. Also, other ways they could control population growth with out taking away individual rights. Next, I put students in groups of two. One student read an article titled, "The Life of a Modern Chinese Boy." The other student read an article titled, "The Life of a Rural Chinese Girl." They were to independently answer questions based on their articles, then using a Venn diagram, compare and contrast life in urban and rural China. Then we had a discussion as a class and using another Venn diagram, we compared and contrast life in the United States versus life in China. I think it went very well. One thing that I am still struggling with when implementing my lessons, is timing. I try to practice before hand, but it is hard when you don't know how long class discussion is going to go for. As far as class discussion goes, I don't want to cut students off, just to move on to the next thing, especially when were having a great discussion. It is a hard thing to balance but I do believe the more experience I get implementing my own lessons the better I will get at judging time.