Demonstration Lab

When I first read over the requirements for the demonstration lab, I was terrified.  We were required to prepare an Agricultural Mechanics Demonstration, and Ag Mechanics is far from my strong point, or my comfort zone.  When I began to dig deeper and actually pick a topic, I knew that I had to stay within either electricity or plumbing since these are the two ag mechanics units I will be coming.  If I were to step outside either of these areas, I would not have had the opportunity to try something that I could use directly in my student teaching experience.

As I went through the planning process, I decided to pull out a demonstration with electricity since I actually had some experience with it.  My initial thought was to pull together the potato battery lesson and show my students what a complete circut was, as well as demonstrate how potatoes can generate energy (this can also be accomplished with lemons, limes, and other citrus).  When I tried this experiment on my own however, the light was hard to see, and I was concerned about lack of student engagement if the demonstration failed.  I decided then to change my lesson and simply demonstrate the properties of a complete circuit.  This was a change made on Tuesday afternoon, less than 24 hours before my demonstration was due.  Needless to say, I stressed myself out.  Looking back, I learned a lesson that I should have grasped a long time ago.  Good things take time, and in order to accomplish good things, I need to allow myself the proper time to prepare.

Moving into my presentation then, I was given many other great opportunities to learn as well.  I began my lesson, and had my students do the bellwork, however, I don't think anyone actually did the work.  Looking back, I should have had paper provided and communicated that this was an expectation that they needed to have done.  One thing I asked them to do was draw an open circuit and a closed circuit.  If this had been done I believe there would have been a smoother transition into the lesson if I had enforced that the students draw out the different circuits.  This also would have given the students a picture to go back and correct and label as the learned what was going on in a circuit.

To teach my students what was going on in the circuit, I showed a video.  I requested that the students take notes.  Again, I do not think that my students took notes.  I believe that in the future I could provide a worksheet or have a little quiz at the end to hold the students accountable for the information presented.  I do not want my students to check out when a video is shown, I want them to understand that I am showing them valuable material.

Finally, my actually demonstration.  I really like how it worked with having my students come up to see the demonstration up close.  However, I do not think my class of 20 students will be able to see the tiny circuit I had to demonstrate with.  I want to work to come up with a different way to ensure that each student can see and is engaged during the demo.  I provied an operation sheet so that the students had steps to follow along with, I really liked that, however I think I will add pictures for when I use it with my students.

This lab taught me a lot when it came to preparation and presentation.  I know that I still need to work on my enthusiasm as well as classroom managment.  I do feel that classroom management went better this week.  I paired my two chatty and distracted students with other students who were more on task.  I believe that this disabled the distrations the two students were causing by playing with the materials, looking for ways to make the lesson "more interesting."  Looking back I would have separateed these two immediately when I noticed they were sitting together up front for the demonstration.

Overall, this was a great experience.  I look forward to keep growing from here!