While I was very nervous to teach in class on Friday the 23rd of January, I think the lesson turned out well. Sam and I spent quite a few hours preparing to teaching, including getting an initial understanding of the reading, getting together and coming up with some ideas, organizing these ideas so as to best reach the students and portray the message, exploring our terms in further detail to get a firm knowledge of what each meant, meeting with the professor to bounce ideas off of her and get her feedback, gathering materials, practicing teaching, and finally teaching the class. I really feel that all of this preparation contributed to how well the lesson went. If I was to do this again, I think I would prepare in just the same way, ensuring that I understood what I was teaching and how I was teaching it.
I feel that one of the strengths of our lesson was the diversity in teaching strategies that we implemented. While some terms were simply explained through lecture, such as tacit knowledge, other areas where taught using books and hands-on activities, such as crystallized intelligence. Also, we incorporated our assessment into the terms we were teaching by using a crossword puzzle to demonstrate fluid intelligence. I also felt like Sam and I did a good job of thoroughly explaining the different terms, offering definitions as well as examples and then taking any questions the students still had.
I was disappointed in my performance when it came to answering questions. I was so concerned with helping the students have a firm understanding of our terms that I ended up having students ask questions that weren’t really pertinent. It was frustrating to be asked a question that I didn’t know the answer to, but at the same time knowing that the question didn’t really matter for what we were doing anyway. I think to address this issue, I would either ask students if they had any questions pertaining to what was just taught or if they had a good understanding of the terms instead of the broad question of “Are there any questions?”.
Up to this point in class we have discussed the educational psychology principles of assessment and intelligence. We addressed these principles teaching to a few of the multiple intelligences through hands-on activities (bodily/kinesthetic), having students discuss terms in groups (interpersonal & verbal/linguistic), and completing a crossword puzzle by themselves (intrapersonal & logical/mathematical). We addressed assessment by having students complete a crossword puzzle where every answer was mentioned in class at some point, so that we might assess how much they had learned throughout the lesson.