Reflective Teaching Lab-Juggling

Wow!..

I was very anxious about the topic I received for teaching in our first lab. I can not juggle and I had no idea how I was going to teach my peers to juggle. However, after looking over the lesson and understanding that I needed to only teach my peers the 'process' of juggling, I felt more confident in my abilities.

I felt prepared for lab in which I had all of my materials collected (balls to juggle with) and I had my Learners Satisfaction forms printed for each of my students and ready to use.

I felt confident and at ease in front of my peers. I felt prepared in my abilities to teach and convey the process of juggling.

After watching the video of myself teaching and taking in to consideration the feedback from my peers, I am satisfied with my teaching from this first lab. I feel I have improvements that I will make, and I will continue to do even better than satisfactory.

Some things I would have done differently, would include supplying different objects for students to juggle with. For next time, I could bring in 3 apples, 3 ties, 3 markers, 3 bowling pins, 3 balls (some of different sizes), etc. I think if I brought other objects, students would have an opportunity to try different ways of juggling. Maybe juggling with one object is harder or easier compared to another object. Also I think this would give my students an opportunity to set themselves apart from one another, maybe one student is better at juggling one object and not another. Lastly, if I used a variety of objects I think it would have made the class more experimental and my students may have felt more excitement and anticipation to participate with each set of objects.

Some thing else I would do differently, is to include a video demonstration of a professional juggling. I think this would be beneficial in giving the students an example of how to juggle (other than myself) and it could have taught them proper ways of juggle where I could not. Also, this would have added structure to my presentation, in which the students would not just be juggling aimlessly for fifteen minutes.

I felt I displayed confidence in my teaching ability and had a good presence in front of the class. I feel I conveyed clear steps to the process of juggling. I feel I repeated the process a few times, to ensure that the students understood the three steps that are taken to juggle three objects. I feel, I walked around and assessed each student and check on his or her progress throughout the lesson. Lastly, I felt that I gave the students positive feedback for their persistence and participation in this activity.

Overall, I think this lab was a success. I feel that this lab was a building block in which it gave me the initial shock of 'what am I going to teach?' to feeling confident and able to convey the process of juggling well. I feel this lab will lead to improvements and it gave me thoughts to consider for any lesson that requires teaching an activity.

-Jenna

"If it doesn't challenge you, it won't change you." -Anonymous