Sunday, August 28, 2016

#AEE412 Lab Reflection #1

Throughout my entire #psuaged17 journey, I have been looking forward to the day when I can move from the desk to the front of the room and teach! Our first #AEE412 lab on Wednesday was my chance to do just that. I was presented a choice of two lessons, and Miranda was assigned as my coach. I was surprised that neither of my choices were agricultural (parts of a castle or chess..., I chose to teach parts of a middle-ages castle) but I realized that that was not important. We are focusing on HOW to teach, not WHAT to teach.

My prep time was less than an hour, mostly because my assessment and content materials were included. I struggled the most with how to convey 14 castle parts and two other facts on the assessment, and give the assessment in 15 minutes. To help with this daunting task, I made the move to write a word bank as we went along. I felt it was important to get the attention of the class in the beginning by setting the stage of walking up to a castle to visit the king. I believe this approach was more successful than starting everyone out cold with vocab.

The results: The class finished with over 80% accuracy. I believe the word bank helped, but things got too confusing with me writing on one side of the board while classmates were drawing the castle. I took my mind off the students needs to do so. I also need to clarify exam length. I asked "who needs more time" and immediately realized that often students are afraid to raise their hand in that situation. I believe I was able to clearly showcase my abilities as a teacher, and my areas for improvement were noticeable. After observing my peers, I would say that #psuaged17 is on a level playing field, and we are all excited to learn together. I cant wait to get back out there again next week!

2 comments:

  1. Nate,
    Thank you for getting this done. In the future, lets get the lab reflection done within 48 hours of the lab itself.

    I need to push you to not just do a play by play and recount, but to dig DEEEP and THINK about what happened that will impact your practice in the future..to address the question of SO WHAT.

    Thanks again!

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  2. I thought it was a great lesson, the word bank helped a lot especially because your audience didn't have background knowledge about castles and time didn't allow you to teach us.

    I think that you could have used a 10 second clip of a castle siege to get the class interested and then done a role play almost of the enemy taking the castle.

    Just some thoughts, I know time was short!

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