Reflective Teaching Lesson (RTL)

      The purpose of today's lab was to give our professor's a baseline of where our ability to teach currently is. We each randomly chose a topic and had to teach and assess the students (our classmates) in a 15 minute timeframe. My goal was to have the class learn 11 parts of a Flint Arrowhead and be able to match them on an assessment. 

Flint Arrowhead

      My initial thought after executing my lesson was "Did I breath? The answer is no. I have a tendency to be high energy and take things at a face pace. Well as soon as I finished teaching I knew I did not filter any of my energy constructively, but went 100 mph through the entire lesson. This was confirmed after reading student assessments and watching my video recording. Unfortunately with the fast pace and high energy combination, my directions were presented unclearly, I was reactive instead of intentional in what I said, and the students did not learn the content as effectively as they could have. 

      What I and the students thought I did well was engage the audience. The high energy presented downfalls but being the last lesson of the day, I woke the students up and made them more reactive to me. I also felt prepared with my materials and content. I knew what I needed to do and I had the materials to do it, but the time constraint did not allow me to utilize my preparedness, and vice versa, I did not utilize the 15 minutes to the best of my ability. 

      In deciding on the presentation method of the lesson, after watching the video I saw my game would have been better suited as a review game. The students had no prior knowledge and I was enforcing quick guessing with no opportunity to think. The mind reactivity I needed would be best utilized once the information is learned and retained. 

      If I were to do this again, I would go simpler and slower with the timeframe allotted. In learning new content, repetition is key and I failed to include that in my teaching approach. In deciding on HOW to teach, I need to decided on the best suited teaching method to achieve my objective, instead of always choosing to answer and fulfill the question, "What will the students enjoy most?". 

      So below are [my goals] for the next lesson I teach:

1. Filter and control my energy throughout the lesson

2. Conduct a practice run prior to teaching

3. Before deciding on a teaching method for the lesson, look up examples on external websites

4. Slow my pace of speech down