Reflections on Small Group Presentations

Reflections on Small Group Presentations
(From in-class activity on March 24)

I liked how we were to apply what we know about teaching science to create a lesson plan to teach our class on the articles. I liked the presentations that didn’t just make a PowerPoint of the facts and theories presented in the article, but rather those that taught us through something else, such as an activity. I was definitely more engaged in the activity ones more than the lecture presentations. I already read the articles, so I thought it was boring and just pointless to be lectured about them again by a group, especially the Inquiry at the Window article since I read it at home, created a lesson to teach the class about it in class, and then had to listen to it AGAIN from another group. It was interesting to see though how two different groups could teach the same thing in different ways. I think I would have liked it better if we just had two groups, so that we wouldn’t have had to listen to the same thing twice, but by doing it this way, it shows us that there are many different ways to go about teaching something, some more engaging than others. I think that you chose to do this activity today to show us just this. We have been talking all semester about how to get students engaged through inquiry, and this activity was to see if we could apply what we knew about it, to teach our fellow classmates. I think some groups definitely did a better job of this than others. The reason you had us to this during class time was because as teachers, sometimes we do not have a lot of time to plan a lesson for various reasons. This activity was an example of how to prepare and use what you have to create the best lesson possible in the limited amount of time that we had.