Student Teaching Reflection 8

This week, I observed some commonalities in my mentor teacher's practices throughout her classes regardless of their ages and academic levels that I found interesting. The first was in how she goes over tests or quizzes. She uses a program to score her multiple choice questions that records how many students got each question correct as well as what percentage of students chose each of the responses. Once she has this information, she looks to see if there are some common misconceptions or reasons students might be getting questions wrong. When she discusses the tests in class, she uses this information to determine which questions to go over in detail and how to address misconceptions. For example, one common mistake on one question was that all of the students who answered incorrectly chose "D. All of the above." She made sure to point out that this could be solved by reading the questions more carefully, and she let the students know that "all of the above" is clearly not always correct in her class. Another teaching practice that I think is helpful for her classes is that she writes a "Do Now" task on the board for each class. Sometimes this is a question that they need to think about or find the answer to, and sometimes it is a task they need to do to prepare for the lesson. This helps get all of the students on task, and in the classes with Juniors and Seniors, often the students are prepared when the bell rings to start class.

In the Anatomy class, I also got to see a guest speaker come in and speak to the class this week. The speaker was a Forensic Biologist. I thought this was a cool way to showcase a career that could come out of a Biology degree, since a lot of the students in Anatomy enjoy the sciences. It also helped the students see some real-world applications of the topics they are learning about. In addition, the students were engaged because it was a different experience than a regular class period.