Lesson Delivery Reflection

At the beginning of the assignment (the planning stages) I kept feeling like I needed to be able to explain everything about the topic in here.  It was something that bugged me up until Amanda and I actually presented.  It also meant that as the instructor we had to be comfortable enough with the material so that we could help the learners make connections in the material, in a way that is pertinent and applicable to them.  One of the ways that I used and felt made a difference was by giving multiple examples of the material, and each example I used had a different “theme.”  Using different themes (kindergartners at recess versus technical collision theory) makes me think critically about the material and who I am dealing with in order to facilitate learning the best way I could.  I really like it when teachers ask questions of the students to get them to think about the material because it keeps students engaged.  When we first started the lesson I was trying to get students to answer questions about a demonstration that we showed (on youtube) so the could come up with somewhat of an understanding of the concepts on their own before we spouted the technical jargon—that way they would have a better idea of what that technical jargon actually meant.

Amanda and I discussed several different methods of assessment that we could use during our presentation, and settled on using a shared document with the problems on it and asking students to email answers to us.  This style of assessment worked ok for the size of class that we had, but any more people or having more sections and students, this would not be a feasible method.  If I were to uses some kind of digital assessment tool for multiple classes, I would use something like surveymonkey.com or polleverywhere.com because these sites compile answers really well and then you won’t have hundreds of emails from every student.  I also think that if a teacher is intent on asking students good questions through out the class period, they can assess in real time where each student is, and if they need to review material or if they can move forward somewhat quicker than expected.

As someone who wants to go into teaching sciences, I think it is very important for me to know and use as many instructional strategies as possible.  By being comfortable with and using several strategies I would be able to keep student invested and engaged in the lesson for the entire time I am in contact with that class.  If I can keep the students engaged in an activity which will help them grasp some aspect of the material, I have succeeded as a teacher because the longer the students stay on task, the more opportunities I would have to help students with material they are struggling with.