RTL's (Reflective Teaching Lesson): Our Guinea Pig Experience

RTL's (Reflective Teaching Lesson): Our Guinea Pig Experience

The first week of school was not your typical syllabus week, here at Penn State. We started off right away with labs and presentations. One of our labs was to partner up and to a demonstrate Reflective Teaching Lesson. This lab wasn't focusing on the content as much as it was just getting our foot in the door and reflecting on what we learned.

The planning period

Nate Repetz (http://firingonallcylindersteachag.blogspot.com) was my partner for this RTL, and my role was to serve as a mentor while he presented the lesson. We were given a lesson on teaching about the structure of a castle... so the blueprints including a moat, towers, walls, rooms, etc. A little outside of our realm of agriculture, but again the focus was on reflection and teaching rather than actual content.

We were given the materials needed including a final exam, and we decided to teach from that. Instead of just simply showing them a blueprint and having them memorize, we thought it would be nice to visually walk through the property and have our students piece together the house as we described it. So our first question was about the moat. What do you encounter first? We would continue with those questions. We would try to emphasize the importance of the different parts of the house, and we wanted to make connections to houses now-a-days.

After this, we would distribute an exam with an unlabeled blueprint, and students would write in the names of the rooms. There were also two other questions about the time period these were used and why they were built the way they were.

Execution

Along with the other lessons presented, I think our lesson went fairly well, and I think the students have an understanding of the parts. Nate asked questions that guided the students to not just "what" it was but what it might have been used for, who would have used it, why it was placed where it was, and let students use their imaginations.

Reflection

Being aware that we had not only a short period to plan the lessons, but we also only had 15 minutes to present the lesson, I would say we did a fairly good job. Out of all of the lessons that we presented, somethings we all noticed that went well were:

• Pacing
• Variability
• Flow
• Resources

I think we have those "basic" concepts down of what a classroom looks like. However, some things that we believe the group could be stronger on is:

• Clarity
• Purposeful/using objectives
• Preparation
• Awareness

I think some of these traits go hand in hand. As far as clarity goes, being able to explain tricky concepts using specific vocabulary will allow students to focus on what needs to be done rather than what the teacher said. Even being more descriptive in procedures is important. So instead of saying "and then put this here... and that goes there" a teacher might say "now place object A on the weighing bowl, and place this on top of the scale". Clarity in all aspects will benefit all students in more ways than one.

In teaching purposefully, this stems from the idea of letting students know what they're learning and why. Instead of just jumping into a lesson and teaching, objectives need to be said. And instead of using precious class time to have students do an activity or answer questions that won't necessarily help with their end goal (but may relate), teachers can skip these non-essential questions and get to the meat and potatoes. For example, if a teacher were starting their lesson on small gas engines, they shouldn't ask questions like "who's been in a car before?". I think it's safe to assume that 100% of your students have been in some type of vehicle before if you're teaching in a school in the U. S.. Unless the area is atypical, teachers can skip those questions.

Preparation is key! Maybe filling out every single little detail in the lesson planning process isn't necessary (especially for our little 15 minute presentations)  but I think it is so important to have a written list of what is being taught. Teachers don't have to hold it or read from it (and shouldn't) but should just use it as a guide and to make sure they are asking all of the right questions, in the right order. That was one thing I really tried to stress as we planned our RTL presentation. Guiding the students room by room meant asking a lot of questions. If we wanted to ensure that we asked all of the appropriate questions in a logical order, it was important to write it down. And of course, being prepared material-wise is important.

Awareness we took to define as just always being aware of where your students are at, which ones are struggling, what you are doing and what they are doing. Are you standing where your students can see you and hear you? Can they also see the board? Are your students scratching their heads or are they excited because they understand? Was your explanation clear the first time? The second time? Placing ourselves in the seats where our students sit and asking ourselves these questions can eliminate many of those uncertainties.