Teaching Experiences

So this week in class my writer's notebook conference went better than last.  My partner and I found some things to talk about and discussed some things we would like to try this week in our journal.  We also had a mini-lesson on non-fiction and saw how hectic it can get when examining such a broad topic to begin with.  I think it would be easier to examine the different types of non-fiction structures independently and then compare them at a later date.  Non-fiction just has such an array of formats, many of which are distinct from fiction but some of which are similar.
We also learned about our MGR paper we will be working on for the next couple weeks and I must say that I am kind of excited about the potential this project has.  And excited about the creativity we will gt to explore as a result.  I cannot wait to see where this project ends.
This week and last week (I believe) we had to teach mini-lessons to a small group of peers.  Both times I found that my group ended up discussing our lesson plan, what we hoped to accomplish and how we would present it to our students, than actually teaching the lesson to one another.  It's just so odd to peer teach.  But from finding a topic and materials to accompany the lesson, I discovered that I am a little indecisive.  It took me forever to figure out what I wanted to teach.  And then once I figured out what I wanted to focus on, poetry, there were so many topics within poetry to teach that I was unsure what I wanted to look at.  In the end, I went for what I thought would be more interesting to learn about.  I find that I often skip over what I feel to be boring, or attempt to make everything as fun as I can.  Like last week I used a Captain Underpants book to teach about dialogue and talk bubbles.  Whether this is a good or bad thing is yet to be decided, however it is probably a mix between the two, leaning more toward good I would hope.  But I definitely learned that I have a hard time teaching something I am not passionate about, interested in, or find fun, which will definitely present some problems in the future.