Choosing a topic for our 10-minute lesson was the easy part. I have been playing Settlers of Catan for about five years now, and am very familiar with the rules/strategies involved. I immediately thought that it would be both visually stimulating (colourful) and would involve some mathematics (probability). Writing a lesson plan that would adhere to our template, however, was a whole new challenge. Eventually, after the outline was complete, I rehearsed the lesson at home (including a tv commercial style introduction) and was satisfied that it would work in front of our group. It's safe to say things didn't go as planned. I found out that (unlike my ghost students in the trial runs) real students ask unforeseen questions that add time to your lesson. Since we compressed a standard hour-long lesson plan by a factor of six, each minute was very precious. I ended up rushing through the theoretical material, as I had only allocated two minutes for the final group activity/end goal of placing the first settlement on the board. Choosing a less ambitious topic may have been easier to achieve more '3s' on the peer assessment cards, but I do enjoy a good challenge.
My colleagues enjoyed the game setup, had fun with the java applet, the applied probability component, and were able to understand the instructions due to the clarity of my voice. Some constructive criticisms (that I agree with) were: to have more game pieces/manipulatives (hexes, settlements, etc...) on hand to move around and the aforementioned time management issue. I also forgot to mention some future directions during the conclusion (a second lesson based on this one).
It just goes to show you how far even a micro-lesson can stray off the beaten path. It was really eye-opening for me in that it made me think about what could happen with an hour-long lesson that was constructed in haste, without considering contingencies.
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