Reflection Week of 2/13/17

This week, I mainly had my conceptual bio students work through their Bio Journal. Although it is tedious, I think that this journal is beneficial because it gives the students a way to organize the information that they are learning. Since many of them will not take notes without the journals, this is a good way to keep them on task and paying attention. I try to keep the students engaged during the days we work on Bio Journals by asking many questions relating to the journal and requiring fairly in-depth answers that require them to answer “why” they think what they do. I also try to break up the class by doing some sections individually and some sections as a group, and including related concepts and examples from the real world. For example, when we discussed limiting factors, I talked about human population growth and what may be a limiting factor for humans. I gave their ecology test this Friday, so we played a review game on Thursday. I found a review game online that is played like connect four. When a team gets a question correct, they get to place a “piece” on the board. The goal is to get four pieces in a row. This game went over surprisingly well with the students, and they enjoyed it… until they realized that it was going to be difficult for anyone to win the game. However, I saw some great teamwork and they enjoyed the competition, so I would probably use this game again. In the future, I would keep count of how many questions each group got correct so there would be a backup winner in case nobody got four in a row.

In addition to my teaching this week, my mentor teacher and I were able to sit down and talk about my strengths and weaknesses in the classroom. We both agreed that some of my strengths include planning, my energy level during lessons, and questioning and praising students. I believe that these are strengths that I’ve built up based on previous experiences. My energy level is due to my own passion about the topics, and my ability to plan and use questioning and praise to engage students is from my time spent tutoring in college. While tutoring, I encountered students with many different needs and learning styles, so I needed to plan for any situation when I went into a new tutoring appointment. I also refused to give any of the students I tutored direct answers to their homework questions, so I had to build up my skill for creating guiding questions.

We also discussed weaknesses that I need to work on, and my mentor teacher only mentioned one. When I am teaching a lesson, I tend to say “alright” a lot to transition into a new concept or question. This can be distracting for the students, so I will try to cut down on the superfluous words that I use while teaching. Another area that I would like to work on is requiring students to raise their hands or calling on students to answer a question. I have several students who are very eager in class and like to answer all of the questions. This keeps other students who may want to answer from being able to, and it keeps students who are not paying attention from being held accountable. When a student calls out in class, I have started asking them to raise their hand, then they answer again after I call on them. In addition, I have begun to specify when I ask a question, “raise your hand and tell me…” or I’ll sometimes call on a student before I ask the question.