Microteaching reflection

Our group taught variables and equations from the grade 8 curriculum. I realized how short 15 minutes can be as we were trying to be responsive to all of the students’ comments and questions. Overall, I thought that our group’s microteaching had both strengths and weaknesses that I can learn from.

Things that went well:
We were told that we had a good opening question, which grabbed the students’ attentions. We had a good intro to variables and solving equations, using the problem solving approach. Our peers thought that we taught at the appropriate level of the class and provided good examples to work with. We used the board space efficiently and had good visuals. Some of the peers also commented that we reacted well to the changes (ie. Students’ questions and comments). Also, many people liked the idea of the last exercise but we didn’t have enough time to work on it.

Areas that need work:
The major mistake we made was leaving out one of the tables during our discussion. I was occupied by the other two tables and I didn’t make any eye contact with the people on the other side. Another major problem was the time management. I spent too much time on going over the example on the board and we were running short on time. This left too little time for one of my group members to do her part, which was leading the class activity. We also need to work on coming up with better context for the word problems and make connection to other areas of life.