Reflection of classmates

I thought one of the better lessons taught was by Amin and Eria who taught a math lesson. Right away they grapped the attention of the class with thier anticipatory set. They had a couple of the student wear shapes (Triangle and rectangle) and come into the classroom to music and a story. As college students we trying to figure out what was going on and I personally think that's a great way to tell if something will be successful. They did a great job in introducing what was going to be taught and sticking to their plan throughout. I thought they got the worst of the behaviors of all the groups that went. However, they handled the class well and got through the lesson. Each of them showed that they will be great teachers and that they know what they are doing.
The only problem I had with this lesson was the use of the set with the rest of the lesson. I don't think anyone really notice because the lesson was so good but set introduce three shapes and the lesson for the most part was about one (triangles). I guess if that is the only bad thing about the lesson, the lesson wasn't bad at all.

Podcast Reflection

I think the Podcast was a good and necessary tool to learn, however I think for the lesson we prepared we ould have done without it. With the world becoming more advanced in techonolgy, being able to relate to that will be important. Even though it was not very affective in our lesson, we did use the podcast. We thought it would be a different way for the students to learn and we thought it would be effective in communitcating to the students. I think the students would not have paid attention to the podcast reguardless of what it was about so to use this as a measuring stick for future lesson would be irresponsible. Using the podcast again is a possibility in my mind for future classes but I think it will have to be well planned and thought out first.

Lesson Reflection

My partner Chris Trenfield and I Prepared and taught a lesson on the inaugural speech of former president John F. Kennedy. As it worked out, we were the first group to teach which was good and bad. The class (students) was given behavior cards so we had to deal with discipline prolems for most of the class. In our preperation, we did not anticipate the behavior being as bad as it was. I think if we would have observed a few groups, we would have been better prepared to deal with the students. The best part about going first was that we got the second best behavior out of the students. I think only the last group had students that were more tame than our students. That was only the advantage for us going first.
The objective of our lesson was to get the students to listen to and answer questions about the JFK speech. We podcasted the speech ourselves for the students to listen to which didnt turn out the way we expected. First, we had trouble loading the podcast and then i think we played it too long. The students got bored listening to the long speech and that's when the behaviors stared to get out of control. Even with the students acting up, we did get through the speech and to the questions we had prepared. Although the lesson was derailed a little by the behavior problems, we did get to assess some of the students who actually listened to the speech from the questions that they answered.
I think the lesson could have been more effective had we first had a behavior plan set before hand. I also believe that if we would have shorten the podcast and got the students more involved with either a game or video we could have had a better lesson. All in all the lesson was good. It was well planned out and with minor changes and regular behavior the students I believe would have learned somthing. With that said, I do remember one of the students responding to the part of the speech when JFK says, "ask not what your country can do for you; ask what can you do for your country" by asking " is that where that came from?" So even though they were acting like kids, we did teach something to actual college students and I think we can be proud of that.

End of March 2nd class

Today we finished everything that we planned on doing and also received some help on the type of questions we should ask.

questions for lesson

What does JFK request of adversary nations?

What was the date this speech was given?

What has outpaced the instruments of peace according to JFK?

What are the 4 common enemies of man?

How long does JFK believe it will take to accomplish his goals?

march 2nd

Today Chris and I will finish our podcast and work on perfecting our lesson plan. We have many more questions that we could add to make the lesson easier to teach. Other than the podcast I think today will be productive. This being our last day in the lab I want to get as much done as I can. I think the only thing that will prevent us from finishing everything is if we make mistakes on the podcasting.

One side note: I am really annoyed with the school for even thinking to charge us (students) for printing in the labs. I think as much as we pay for school and as little as paper cost the least they could do is allow us to print for free. With the cost of books and classes and even parking the school should find some way to keep printing free. Ok I do understand their side of it to being that some people take advantage but the few shoudn't ruin things for the many.

By the end of class my partner, Chris and I saw how reading a speech can be difficult. Not difficult because of the reading itself but difficult to read because of its importance and wanting it to be perfect. Although we did not finish the speech and we have more podcasting to do, it was a good experience even though we made many mistakes. I think the biggest plus for us today was making those mistakes gave us more time to read over the speech and disect the meaning of some of the things that were said. Going into the project both of us knew that it was a powerful speech and that it would be an interesting lesson but the podcasting has brought a new dynamic to the process. Most importantly, we are having fun and learning at the same time, not only about history but also about each other.