Kiera
Schultz - 001194038
Micro-Teach Reflection
This month in our education 2500 class, we worked on creating mini lessons appropriate
to the grade we are currently observing. My grade class is working on literacy, and using
expanding vocabulary/word parts to understand word meanings, as well as they are currently
doing dinosaur research projects. Since we have talked often about changing curriculums, and
integrating cross curricular themes into classrooms, I decided to take on a cross curricular mini
lesson.
In my mini lesson, I was fortunate enough to have the help and guidance of two of the
grade teachers at my practicum school. In this, we collectively worked together to create a
cross-curricular activity and mini lesson, and on the presentation day, one of the teachers had a
doctors appointment, so I was fortunate enough to take her place and present my mini lesson to
75 students. I was, at first, a little bit nervous about my mini lesson, and presenting to three grade
classes. I was concerned about holding their attention, and a little nervous about making the
content of the lesson interesting enough to keep them engaged for the full twenty minutes I had
to fill. The experience was truly wonderful, and I am so glad I was able to present to the three
classes. I felt very confident in that I kept students attention, and through techniques I learnt from
watching the other teachers over the past few weeks, any time the discussion period got carried
away, I used hand signals observed from my TA.
Overall, I felt that this mini lesson went very well, and was thankful for the experience. I
was also thankful for the opportunity to have done it in front of the students, before my peers in
class that afternoon. I had my TA fill out a reflection form, and we discussed the mini lesson
while students were given another 20 minutes to complete the boggle section of the lesson. One
thing, she and I discussed, was that at the end of the lesson I had told students, when doing their
Kiera Schultz - 001194038
boggle, not to use their agendas for spelling help, because that would be the only way they were
going to learn. I immediately had wished I had not phrased it that way because there are many
ways for students to learn and that choice of phrasing was probably not the best. When I
discussed it with my TA she said it was okay that I said it like that only because the students
wont learn if they are copying from their agendas. Next time I would rephrase this, and try to
get the same point across while understanding there are many ways to learn.
That same afternoon, I was able to present my mini lesson to peers of my education 2500
course and thoroughly enjoyed the experience. I realize that the forty minutes given for the grade
students was just the right amount of time, but the fifteen minutes given to present to peers
was almost too much. I was worried about my peers having too much time to do the boggle
exercise so I only gave them two minutes to do it, and then moved onto an interactive syllables
song. In hindsight, I would have taken an extra two minutes to carefully explain the objectives to
both my peers and the students. I realize that because I was excited and anxious to get everything
into the mini lesson, I didnt explain the objectives and rules for the boggle exercise as carefully
as I should have.
I also noticed when marking the boggle sheets from the students, that many of them
thought they were supposed to put slashes marking the word part for all spelling words not just
dinosaur names. While marking, it occurred to me that the instructions I gave, asking students to
show the dinosaur name word parts as learned in the mini lesson, came across to them as though
they were to show me the word parts for all spelling words in the boggle lesson. So while
observing sheets, I had bones written as bo/nes to show me the word part. It was interesting to
see and learn how some students took these instructions, and if I were to do this again, I would
Kiera Schultz - 001194038
take an extra minute to explain that they were only to show the word parts of the dinosaur names,
not all the words.
Overall it was an amazing experience and taught me lots about teaching at different
levels, planning appropriately for the given time, and maintaining the attention of the given
audience. If I were to do this again, I would explain the rules and objectives to both audiences
more carefully. I would also be more cautious with the time given for my peer presentation, and
would have left out the syllables interactive song at the end of the presentation. This was a
wonderful learning experience and I am looking forward to the opportunity to do many more,
and continue personal growth from each experience.
