For my Microteach assignment in Teaching Seminar I covered KSA #5- Teachers identify and respond to learner differences. After all the planning and conducting of my lesson I want to reflect on some of the strengths and weakness and some of the things I would change. I felt that this lesson went substantially more fluent than previous ones, that might be due to better planning or more practice. I felt more confident, spoke more slowly and facilitated student conversations better. The introduction for this microteach went well- I gave students some background knowledge, found out where they were at by asking what they already knew about differentiated instruction. At this point as a class we had a fairly good understanding so I jumped right in to our activities planned for the day. Instructions for all activities were clear and student feedback confirmed that. Student's group conversations were strong and creative which was the whole purpose of my activity.
Although overall I think the lesson went well there were a few weaknesses and things I would change. Time management is difficult! As you can see in my revised lesson plan I have juggled the times around. One thing I want to work on is planning more appropriate amounts of time for certain activities but also keeping track of time throughout the lesson. In this lesson we spent too much time on prior assessment and the introduction. The downfall of this was I had to cut time out of activity #2 and remove the jigsaw strategy I had planned to use in activity #3. Instead of jigsawing groups we shared our ideas as a whole group. I did not mind sharing the ideas as a whole group and if I did this lesson again I would likely keep that the same because I might have planned too much for a 15 minute lesson. The end of the lesson was rushed and we did not have a proper close (ie. no time for questions or not enough time to fill out exit slip.) I would shorten the beginning assessment conversation to 1 minute and activity #1 to 2 minutes to allow extra time for activity #2 and #3.
In a subsequent lesson I would switch the focus from implementing differentiation techniques and brainstorm some ideas or strategies for teachers to use. As first year teachers DI is intimidating and challenging. As a class I would have us create bullet points in a document called "Tips for Teachers" and as a group discuss ways we can make planning easier on ourselves but still tailor to our vast variety of learners.
Although overall I think the lesson went well there were a few weaknesses and things I would change. Time management is difficult! As you can see in my revised lesson plan I have juggled the times around. One thing I want to work on is planning more appropriate amounts of time for certain activities but also keeping track of time throughout the lesson. In this lesson we spent too much time on prior assessment and the introduction. The downfall of this was I had to cut time out of activity #2 and remove the jigsaw strategy I had planned to use in activity #3. Instead of jigsawing groups we shared our ideas as a whole group. I did not mind sharing the ideas as a whole group and if I did this lesson again I would likely keep that the same because I might have planned too much for a 15 minute lesson. The end of the lesson was rushed and we did not have a proper close (ie. no time for questions or not enough time to fill out exit slip.) I would shorten the beginning assessment conversation to 1 minute and activity #1 to 2 minutes to allow extra time for activity #2 and #3.
In a subsequent lesson I would switch the focus from implementing differentiation techniques and brainstorm some ideas or strategies for teachers to use. As first year teachers DI is intimidating and challenging. As a class I would have us create bullet points in a document called "Tips for Teachers" and as a group discuss ways we can make planning easier on ourselves but still tailor to our vast variety of learners.
microteaching_lesson_plan_revised.doc |