Saturday 5 December 2015

Group Micro-Teaching - Reflection

      Our group's mini-lesson was separated into three parts, where each segment was taught by one of our members.  The topic and course introduction mentioned which mentioned the tenth grade level (to get 'students' in the mindset) and mentioned the topic of the day (first lesson in a new unit).  I asked some review questions, had the learners provide the answers for the class (teacher-guided).  Afterwards, I used their extensive ninth grade knowledge of linear function to introduce the concert of rate of change (zero, positive, negative) based on the slope.  Students seemed to understand the relationship well, but when I threw the curve ball (quadratic function - non constant rate of change) one student said they've never seen that before.  I made sure to ask the class if they had any questions before passing the mic to Arshbir, who ran the second phase: a Kahoot quiz.  She explained that these question were drawn from the textbook and to use your instinct combined with the new knowledge acquired to answer.  Some students were confused with axes that weren't labelled or by questions that have more than one solution.  Since there were a number of unforeseen questions, she made an informed decision to cut the quiz short (an excellent adaptation, in my opinion).  After the virtual activity was completed, Sissi explained the second activity: groups working creatively to come up with answers given a situation contained in an envelope.  I think this activity was well received, it's unfortunate that we didn't have time to see more than one of their answers (or take up the Kahoot quiz).  Overall, I think our mini-lesson went well.            
      As with most of these mini-lessons, the challenge for the audience is to un-learn what they're mastered over the years.  We had some questions that the vast majority of tenth grade students would not ask (especially for a new topic).  An analogy would be trying to teach a math major how to add to integers: they may ask about how the binary operation of '+' is defined, its properties, and which field are we working with.  Most first graders would not ask these questions (maybe Gauss) which affect the timing of the lesson.     

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