Skip to main content

Micro-Teaching Reflections

Micro-teaching in a three teacher team proved to be very challenging, particularly with the short time restraint.

In the feedback forms, we received are largest proportion of criticism in content and timing. The two are inter-related as we made errors in estimating how much time each activity would take. The first segments of the lesson took much more time than anticipated, particularly reviewing and explaining an earlier concept from a hypothetical previous lesson. (Our students weren’t sure how to respond.) A helpful comment noted that that we could have done a review as an entire class, rather than a peer activity. In hindsight, perhaps a conceptual review rather than a calculation would have sufficed. A positive comment we received was that we distinguished between simple and compound interest concepts well, although I can definitely think of better ways (noted below.)

The difficulty in this situation was then to adapt the plan on the spot. A possible adaptation was to scrap the worksheets and work together on the board using visual representations/manipulatives. This might work better if the team consisted of a leader among teachers to make such decisions. In our scenario, we decided to try squeeze the remaining planned eight minutes into four minutes.

Further improvements to make to this lesson:
Simpler numbers. My goal to use real-life scenario and figures could have been saved for a later lesson, after the topic was already presented with more “approachable” numbers.
Visuals. pictorials to represent terms/concepts such as the principal term, and the interest rate. comparing simple and compound interest concepts.

 Feedback Forms

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Reflections on Elliot W. Eisner's "Three Curricula that Schools Teach"

Eisner sets out to explain the three curricula taught by schools, including the 1. Explicit curriculum - what is made public through course announcements 2. Implicit curriculum - the socialization through physical and behavioural structures of the school and classroom 3. Null curriculum - what is left out from our explicit curriculum Through his theory of implicit education, Eisner makes his case that is it usually more important for a student to study the teacher, rather than the course content, in an attempt to achieve a good grade. The students reads the environment created by the teacher to establish to determine how much effort they should put into a class, particularly in systems that use behaviour modification techniques. How is it that we should go about cultivating student initiative and to develop intrinsic motivation so that students find the joy of learning for themselves, rather than to please their community - teachers, parents, and peers - through their achievements...
1 comment
Read more

Lesson Plan for Figure Skating: Waltz Jump

Lesson Plan Date: 10/18/2017 Grade/Class: EDCP342A Length: 10 minutes 1. Measurable Objective(s): Students will be able to: Identify the edges on a skating boot/blade Practice a healthy use of the knee to bend and jump Perform a waltz jump on the ground 2. Required Prior Knowledge and Skills: • Walking • Balance on one foot 3. Review Needed: • None 4. Materials, Repertoire, Equipment needed: • Ice skates 5. Agenda: Ice Skate Anatomy Edges, Weight, and Momentum Jump Prep Completing the jump 6. Le...
Post a Comment
Read more

Microteaching reflection

Yesterday, in small groups, we taught each other micro-lessons around a topic that was non-math/non-curricula. I decided to teach a lesson on a figure skating: waltz jump (on the ground) - Lesson plan in previous post. Reflecting upon the experience, I was a little nervous throughout the process, teaching a skill that I had done over and over again, but had not thought much about the learning of the process in over ten years. Although a clear lesson plan was drawn out, I did not review it as much as I should have, and smaller details were omitted. (Waltz jump along the arc of a circle and connects to the edges used.) My peers seemed to enjoy the task of learning about the skating boot, knee health, and performing the jump, and all written comments were positive. I ran out of material at the end, and as this was as far as I had done in figure skating, I wasn't entirely sure how to proceed from there. (This shows in two feed back forms that indicated that my area of improvement was...
Post a Comment
Read more