Thrilling Thursdays

         

   Thrilling Thursdays is the phrase my Co-op uses to describe my weekly visits, but this past Thursday was more than thrilling.  

            

 It was only day two of my early field experience and my Co-op invited me to teach. My mission was to explain how to control aperture and shutter speed to obtain the student’s desired exposure However, I wanted the lesson to be more than a presentation or lecture. I thought long and hard about how to present the material and especially how to reinforce what the students had learned after teaching. I was prepared with a slideshow about exposure that highlighted the two components, shutter speed and aperture. My Co-op and I discussed the material and decided to focus on just one aspect of exposure for that day. Creating small simple lessons or steps towards the main objective s one-way to set up the students for success. Students wont feel overwhelmed and you can better gage what material they comprehend if you break it up in to smaller chunks. This is one method of classroom management I hope to maintain in my future classroom.

           

This particular Thrilling Thursday we focused on shutter speed. There were only three slides to show; a diagram that visually illustrated the variety of shutter speeds and two images contrasting slow and fast shutter speeds. The presentation was only five minutes of class, but it was not lecture style.  Instead the class discussed why they would want to understand and be able to control these settings. The students then were asked to identify the shutter speed used for each of the example exposures. This was a great way to monitor that the students understood the concept. Before we started shooting Mrs. Migliore and I checked each groups camera to ensure it was set to shutter speed priority mode and that the shutter speed was set to 1 second. This was a formative assessment to make sure that each group was on task, and to check their understanding. The students were asked to compose a few photos using different shutter speeds. And then the fun began...

           

 The student's were able to capture the light trails from my LED hoops and this was a hands-on exercise to reinforce the concept of shutter speed. To hear the student’s remarks while they were experimenting with various shutter speeds was so rewarding. They were excited and amazed by their photo results. And at the end of class I was able to meet with each of the groups and look through their photos. While flipping though their results they were able to distinguish which exposures had long shutter speeds and which exposures were taken too quickly.