This week I also taught a brief section of a lab out of my Poultry Unit for my Animal Science class that I will be teaching in the Spring. We were to teach our Interest Approach section of the lesson plan. I honestly never would have guessed I would spend the amount of time I did preparing for this lab. The Interest Approach really does make or break the whole lesson. I quickly realized that if I did not develop something that would really catch every students attention, I would risk wasting an entire class period for some of my students.
When I finally stepped up in front of the class to teach, I was confident in my material and my plan of action. However, I made a mistake from the very beginning. My activity was to give each student an egg to examine on their own. In hindsight, I should have given clear directions before I placed eggs in front of the students. I also should have been more strict on time. Instead, I gave each student an egg then began to give them the directions for the entire activity. I had classmates who wanted to start and egg fight, had questions about the activity, and a few other things. Most of these situations could have been avoided if I gave direction first, then gave strict time to complete the task. When I use this to teach my students, I plan to give the eggs, then tell the students they have 15 seconds to observe the outside of the egg and write down what they see. After that I will have everyone crack their eggs open at the same time, and then continue with the observations of the inside of the egg.
I did conduct both my First Day of Teaching Lab and my Interest Approach Lab on the same day, so I only had a short amount of time to reflect on my first experience before I jumped into my second. As a result, I still feel that I need to work on engaging the students more and vamping up my own energy. However, I do believe I got better at cutting out filler words such as "okay!"
I am really looking forward to continuing this learning process!
Hey Quinn!
ReplyDeleteNice reflection! I'm glad that even though the first part of the interest approach didn't go so well but you were able to put that aside and plan for the future. I'm sure this experience will help you when teaching and giving students instructions! HAHA, way to go on the Okay's :), I need to work on UM!!
There was a great deal of reflection in your blog Quinn. I really liked how you brought up your mistake, because that is something many of us, especially as inexperienced teachers, would have done as well. I spent a decent amount of time on my approach too, more than I thought, so there is a learning process that we all have to become comfortable with before we get out and teach. I am glad you're taking everything in stride, that's what we have to do as teachers, so keep up the good work!
ReplyDeleteGreat reflection, Quinn! I agree that we need to have good engagement in the interest approach or we will lose some students for the whole period!!
ReplyDeleteLove the reflection of instructional formats - just an example of how all of us should be learning something from these labs. I hope your real students don't try and have an egg fight, however!!! #crazycohort
Hi Quinn,
ReplyDeleteI really like the reflection on how you would like to change when you gave directions. I think I had the same problem with my lab and completely agree on how you will go about it next time.
Great reflection!!