#AEE412: The 3-day Micro-Teaching Lab

Up until this week, all of our teaching labs took place in Ferguson Building and our students were our fellow #psuaged18 cohort members. So while it has been good practice, it still wasn't real bananas (an inside joke from our lesson about contextual learning). However, this week was different. This week we had a 3-day micro-teaching lab at an ag program in central PA. Each of us was responsible for teaching one class for three days in a row. I taught an Animal Science class about the skeletal system, and while it was an exhausting week, I learned so much and really enjoyed the experience. I am also very thankful that we were so prepared for this from all of the scaffolding that took place throughout the semester. Here are some gems and opportunities for improvement that I took away from this experience.

Gems

1. Mixing up the way students take notes. While I was micro-teaching I tried teaching the components of bone a little differently and had my students take notes differently. I read an article Dr. Foster posted (thanks Foster!) about note-taking and one of the techniques was having a gallery walk to take notes. Basically, I used large post-it posters to write down key information about the inorganic and organic components of bone, put the posters on tables around the room, gave the students a note sheet, and set them loose to write and draw the important information. I thought it went quite well! It got students up and moving and promoted talking about what information was key. However, it is important to walk around the room to make sure everyone is understanding and not just copying the information. The learner satisfaction forms that the students filled out indicated that they enjoyed taking notes in different ways.

2. I used a variety of learning activities in each lesson. I think this is something both my cohort member, Ally, and I did very well. Each of the lessons I taught had a variety of activities to help students learn and review what they learned. We segmented our classes well and made sure that the students weren't doing the same thing for an extending period of time.

3. I included WHY learning about the skeletal system is important. This definitely could have been talked about more and reinforced, but I'm glad I included a segment on how being knowledgable about the skeletal system can help you choose animals who will produce more and live healthier lives.

Opportunities for Improvement 

1. Timing and pacing so that everyone is on track. This was a hard one for me. Thankfully I wore my watch two of the days and that really helped me keep track of time. I definitely had way too much planned, which I knew and was ok with, but I think we could have accomplished more. And even some of the students said in their learner satisfaction forms that they think we could have gone a little faster. But I also know that some of the students needed that extra time. I think in the future, I need to be better about including "how much time" in my instructions (or asking the students how much time do they think they need and then negotiating from there) and also planning extra questions for those students who finish up really early. I want my future ag classes to be full of learning for students of all learning levels. I'd love to hear about your experiences and any pro tips you have!

2.  Getting materials to students. I think this stems from a habit I picked up in our other labs. Since there are only 4 "students" in our labs, I always just handed out materials to them at their desks. Well that does not work when you have larger groups of students. In the future I need to have a student from each group come up and get their materials after I explain the directions.

3. Review what a concept map was with the whole class. On the third day, I had them make a concept map that shows the relationship between the components of bone. I gave these instructions to students as they finished their gallery walk notes, but I soon realized that I should have had the whole class review what a concept map was. I guess I just kind of assumed that they all would have made one before in their other classes. We worked through it and I gave an example as I explained it to each group, but doing a whole class review would have been faster and easier. I also think that if I knew the students better I would have known that we needed to review concept maps.

Thank you for following my #TeachAg journey! I'd love to hear your thoughts and advice!