Micro-teaching

In this blog post I am going to discuss my micro-teaching experience each day.  I was teaching the water cycle to the Natural Resources and Ecology class at Tyrone High School

Day 1: 

Today was a little bit rough, the students at Tyrone did not understand the materials as well as Mrs. Hoy and I thought they did. The students were also testing my classroom management skills.

During the class, the students were working well and responding to the lesson, I did not get nearly as much covered as I wanted to (less than half of the lesson that was supposed to take 1 day). After the class was over, I spoke with Mrs. Hoy and we decided that the students did not understand the materials and terms at all. I decided to take a different approach for day 2. 

Day 2:

Today I decided to start with a quick PowerPoint to teach the students all of the terms they needed to know to understand the lesson. For each term I gave the definition and examples for each. For example, deposition is the process of water vapor turning directly into ice. You would normally see deposition when you are either high up in the mountains, or on a very cold night when your windshield is dry but you come out in the morning and it is covered in frost. The students really learned the definitions from this. 

Next I had the students take the slips of paper they had (with the picture and definitions) and cut it in half so that the picture was separated from the definition. Once they were cut up, they had to put all the pieces back into an envelope. I collected the envelopes and mixed them up so they got one from a different group. The students then had to work to pair up they pictures and definitions, and also place them in order they might come in the water cycle. 

Once they students finished this they were given a sheet with 3 boxes on it. In those 3 boxes were the words: Water Vapor, Water, Ice. The students were then told to draw a concept map using all of the terms they had learned. This was meant to reinforce the way water changes during each stage of the water cycle. 

Day 3: 

Today we finally got around to finishing the lesson. This class was a great learning experience for me. I got to see the reality of teaching and see how a 1 day lesson could turn into a 3 day lesson. once we finished the conclusion part of the CASE lesson, I handed the students out a learner satisfaction form for them to fill out. The feedback they gave had a huge range. Some students wish I had gone fast and others wanted me to slow down more. This just goes to show that no matter what you do as a teacher, it is not going to work for everyone.