MCAS Prep Teaching - 1st day(s) teaching

This Monday and Thursday I "taught"/tutored the group of freshmen after school, but I feel Thursday was much more productive than Monday for both me and the students. Monday I just handed out the outline and packet of papers Mrs. Gallo had prepared for the 8-session class, and then gave them a practice test to take in order to identify areas of weakness, and told them they could ask me if they had any questions and we could go over it the next week. So I didn't have to do much, but on Thursday I went over the test with them and answered their questions or encouraged classmates who understood something better to help the others who didn't. Then I went over a power point with them about ecology and explained everything slide by slide, offered more examples, and answered their questions. I had never really done that before so I was kind of worried that I wouldn't know what I was talking about or how to convey the information in a way that they would comprehend, but I just tried my best and brought all the enthusiasm and effort I had into it, and I think it worked. I was able to come up with very understandable examples and parallels for them to understand the scientific terms and relations etc. (i.e. niche competition is like 2 people who both want the one pizza in the room), and when I asked them if they got it they smiled and nodded. I was worried that they would get bored and not pay attention, but I think my energy kept their attention and made it less lecture-like so they stayed more interested. Another challenge I thought I would have was the time limit because we only had about 40 minutes to go over the test and learn all the stuff in the slide, but I explained stuff so simply that they got it right away, and we ended up with a few extra minutes to start the homework together.
I think I am also fulfilling more of Objective 1 because I am learning that explaining things, having patience, and keeping interest of students are strengths of mine, but I think I would have to work on being able to develop my own lesson plans for a class.