EDCP 342: Reflection – Micro-teaching

Yesterday, Miranda, Alex and I presented a micro-teaching lesson on slope for Grade 10 Foundations and Pre-Calc Mathematics. Some of the positive feedback we received included a good into and pace, successfully circulating the classroom, incorporating technology through the applet, addressing possible confusion for students, eye contact, visual aids, and using group work. Areas for improvement were volume when speaking to the class, a clear definition of slope at beginning or end of lesson, and having students practice with app.  General comments concerning the planned activity favored the group aspect, providing good guiding questions, adapting activity to challenge more advanced students, a relevant but fun activity, and if given more time to have students draw more slopes using different colors on laminated planes.

Overall, I feel that our group successfully worked with one another as a team as the lesson progressed to compliment and aid each other’s sections. I think the use of the laminated sheets to have students work in small groups to draw slopes created good discussion. Creating a series of questions/slopes with elements that had not been addressed in the lesson was a great way to challenge those students who quickly understood the concept.

Personally, I feel that I should have better outlined how I was going to use the applet to demonstrate slops and how it changed given vertice movements.  One suggestion described using progressive slopes, 1, ½, ¾, to emphasize the change and movements for the horizontal and vertical aspects. I feel this would have provided a more clear and sequential explanation of the breakdown of rise and run. Also, the original intent to formalize a slop definition was missed given time crunch however; this could be fixed by doing so before the activity and would also act as a guide for students as they work. Another personal aspect to be more aware is allowing enough time for students to answer questions that I pose – must start internally counting after posing questions to the class.

Watching other groups present was a great way to see other approaches to presenting lessons and also inspired me with other ideas to fix any problems or issues with our lesson, or just alternative methods to presenting the material. This exercise also reminded me to not overwhelm a lesson with trying to incorporate as many styles and modes of delivery as possible!