Beers/Probst Takeaways and Questions

My apologies that it's a tad longer than the recommended 2-3 minutes, but I hope the extra 1.4 minutes won't dissuade too many people from watching. I'm really looking forward to reading the comments and responding! Here ya go:

Reflection on Appositives Mini-Lesson

Classroom Presence

As I watch more and more of the videos of myself teaching, I think I'm finally starting to believe that I look comfortable in front of the class. My general demeanor always appears more calm on the video than I feel it seems as I'm teaching. Maybe my nervousness just manifests itself in the form of corny jokes and general silliness. That works for me.

Engagement

The lesson wasn't all roses, though. As you can see in the video, should you care to watch, it's really heavy on lecture at the front end and leaves little room for student engagement beyond simply reading the slides of the presentation. I chose a grammar lesson specifically because I wanted to try my hand at engaging students with a less than exciting topic, so I'm not too frustrated with the lack of engagement up front. I'm still learning after all. It just wasn't as engaging as I'd hoped it would be, and that's probably because I sped through the first part in an attempt to make sure I had time for the game. A combination of planning for time more accurately and holding myself accountable for the specific times that I allot for activities would greatly help lessons like this. For example, when I say "30 more seconds" and then proceed to give students a full minute to do something, I've wasted valuable time that could've been used earlier in the lesson.

Relating to Students

Throughout the first section of the mini-lesson, I thought I did a half-decent job of making myself a part of the group of struggling writers by using collective language and referencing problems with my first drafts. Until I watched the video, that is. As much as I thought it may have helped, watching it seemed almost like pandering to the students and not genuinely relating to them. It's a problem that's relatively easily solved if I just get more comfortable with sharing my work with students. I need to actualize my struggle as a writer in front of them to create that trust. That's got to happen in my next writing lesson.

Checks for Understanding

For the most part, I think I did a good job of checking for understanding. Particularly, I think that making the individual check-ins part of a team event could help motivate students to really think about what they're reading and responding to. I was worried at first that this technique could be a point of contention among team members, but the eyes-closed, silent checks seemed to do a good job of allaying that fear. Combine that with the team effort to create and recognize appositives afterward, and almost everyone had the chance to show their knowledge in relatively low-pressure situations. The one outlier was the scorekeeper. As poignantly as possible, my question to Bernadette near the end of the lesson reveals the downfall of the technique. I forgot to check for the scorekeeper's engagement and assessment throughout the game. In a classroom setting, I could handpick the student that I knew already had a handle on things to be the scorekeeper for me, which would relieve a little bit of the impetus to assess the person. However, I still need to think of a way for whoever fills that role to engage him-/herself in the lesson. Perhaps, she could be the one to pick out the appositives in each of the groups sentences and could be my tie-breaker for creativity each round. I'm not sure if that would be enough of a check, but it's better than nothing.