Planning, Safety, and Teamwork

Yesterday was our first lesson in front of a class of second graders and it was exhilarating! It was a blur and I feel like I don't remember it all, but I know I loved every second of it!! The students loved the"What's in the Bag" experiment. 
Paige and I planned our lesson two weeks before, and even though we reviewed it multiple times, I went into the classroom feeling like we were going to forget something or we wouldn't remember exactly what we wanted to say. When we got into the classroom, there were some technical difficulties with our video that we wanted to show, but because we had planned enough activities, it wasn't a big deal. I was really proud of us at this point; we didn't let a little glitch ruin the rest of our lesson, and we were able to eventually get the video up and running. And even if we didn't say everything exactly as we scripted it, we remembered all of the important parts and the kids really got a lot out of everything we said.
I was in charge of discussing safety. The students had really great ideas about why it is important to be safe when exploring science, even things Paige and I hadn't thought of (and they were all so cute using the wafting technique)! We talked about the importance of safety when using your 5 senses - not tasting something unless a grown-up says it's okay, not touching anything sharp, using the wafting technique when smelling, not looking at bright lights for too long, and not shaking the bag violently and hitting your neighbor when listening. The kids did really great and followed our directions closely.
Working as a team was ideal for this experiment and I was glad I had Paige with me. Near the end, I had a really important point I wanted to make, but I was floundering and couldn't think of what I wanted to say, so Paige was able to help me out. Another thing that was great about working as a team was that we could float around to each group and answer all the questions more quickly and effectively, so a child wasn't waiting for a long time. I really liked working as a team!