RTL Reflection

RTL Reflection 

The first week of my senior year is completed! It's crazy to think the summer is over and we are back at school. This week has been chalked full of new information to better ourselves as future educators. Our first assignment this week was to come up with a 15-minute lesson on a random topic that we selected. The topic I ended up with was Heat Energy and Temperature... At first, I had no idea how to teach the topic or enough content knowledge about it. I sat a bit trying to sketch out ideas and nothing was coming to mind.  So to help me get over the mental block, I did what I always do when I am stuck.  I googled it!

 As I was reading, I realized that I already knew a lot of the information, but I was too focused on the assignment itself to think clearly. One thing I struggled with was trying to find ways to make the topic fun which was a mistake. I spent way too long trying to find a fun activity and not the content. In one of my class readings, I found a quote that helped, "Fun is fine in the classroom, but the fun is the result of accomplishment, not the purpose of learning". After reading that I started to focus more on the content of the lesson and it became a lot easier to write.  Another thing I need to work on is checking for understanding. I noticed I didn't do it as often I should of and a couple of other people made a note of that too.

Things that I did well and other people have mentioned it was the visuals on the powerpoint. I didn't want the powerpoint to be text heavy, so I had a lot of visuals. This helped with understanding the content because I was able to show examples. With the lesson being 15 minutes I was a little nervous that I would rush through the information, but I had pretty good pace and was able to cover everything that was needed.

This activity put in perspective the areas that I need to improve on but also gave me confidence knowing I have skills already set. I am excited to see what else AEE 412 has to offer.