Back to Back Mini Lessons

This past week I had the opportunity to teach two mini lessons from one of my content areas to a small group of my peers. On Tuesday, I utilized the twenty minute period to begin an exploration of the seasons.  We looked at how temperature varies between the northern and southern hemisphere (in particular how the seasons are six months apart in each hemisphere). On Thursday, we spent some time clarifying vocabulary related to rigid transformations of 3 dimensional bodies while reviewing the relationships we had identified and discussed on Tuesday. The experience was extremely beneficial in helping me to develop a better understanding of how educators must adjust their curriculum from one day to the next.

As a future educator, teaching back to back lessons manifested the importance of flexibility and assessment.  In my first lesson, I had students complete an entrance ticket and a journal prompt. When I assessed these two formative assessments, it showed me that my students' vocabulary had a misconception: many of the students seemed to suggest that the Earth's rotation around the sun caused the seasons. This confusion of "rotate" and "revolve" made me reconsider the learning goals I had for the next lesson. While I hoped to still touch upon the visual model I wanted to emphasize, I realized that my students needed a little formal instruction on the vocabulary of space science. This subtle change seemed to help students better articulate their understanding of why we have seasons, but it also prevented us from looking deeply at a visual model of the seasons.  Even without much additional support many of my peers were able to produce a visual model and use it to explain the seasons. Of the seven students I worked with on Thursday, half of them would be assessed as proficiently meeting the part of the standard we looked at, while the other half are very close but missing a key detail (approaching proficiency).  This experience truly challenged me to be creative with my instructional strategies while considering individual needs and the end goal of the learning.

In the feedback from my professors and peers, I noticed a couple elements of my instruction that could stand to be improved and a few where I am effective as an educator. Many of my peers noticed that they felt rushed or didn't have enough time to complete the formative assessments I gave them. As an educator I need to get better at estimating how long tasks will take when planning lessons.  Both days I was unable to go into as much depth as I had hoped because of the time constraint. In the future I may want to sacrifice some of the breadth to allow for deeper exploration in particular areas where students are interested. On the other hand I am really excited that almost all of my peers and both of my professors noted my passion, enthusiasm, and overall content knowledge. Having these raw skills already will help me keep focused and stay engaged while developing effective learning opportunities and overcoming adversity. Additionally many others noted that my use of a manipulative (a globe) helped to enhance the learning through giving students a visual model to scaffold their learning.  Almost all of my reviews made comments about the clear focus and solid organization, which was really surprising seeing as I improvised so much (especially on the second day).

In my personal reflection, I am really happy with how I have grown as an educator.  Even compared with last semester, I am much more confident in my ability to plan engaging and effective learning opportunities. I hope to continue growing in this area by improving my time planing skills. I have also greatly enhanced the quality of my questions (especially my follow-up questions).  Both of my professors noticed how I utilized questions to more deeply understand where and how my students are arriving at misconceptions. As a student, I observed some impressive educators who utilized questions to help students arrive at conclusions in ways that helped students take ownership of their conclusion. As a future educator, I understand the impact that a great question can have and the power that comes with a student found conclusion. As Professor Wigglesworth noted, I need to improve the variety of styles my questions take. I think I am most comfortable with questions that have a right or wrong answer due to the ease which you can redirect the answer (whether the students get what you want them to or not). In becoming a more confident and effective educator, I need to get better at asking and responding to more open ended questions. Open ended questions cut deeper to the root of students' misconceptions.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1qCe2htMT8BMyZrB9dpSkTg6cNE7T7SYd