Mini-Teach Reflection
I taught a 10-minute lesson on how beer is made to my fellow graduate students. In teaching this lesson, I demonstrated significant skill in some areas and noticeable flaw in others. In this reflection I will use the lenses of cognitive and sociocultural theories to analyze my lesson. From a cognitive viewpoint, I made a lot of effort to present the information in a logical, organized manner so that the audience would absorb the information in a logical, organized manner and thus mentally store this information in ways that should make it easier to recall at a later date. I began by asking questions (e.g. What are the four basic ingredients in beer?) of the audience and using these questions to get my audience to access the part of their brain storing the existing information relating to my topic. I then organized my Power Point presentation into a simple, five-step process that breaks down a somewhat complicated procedure into more manageable, understandable parts. Organizing data in such a way is a heuristic for learning complex processes. You don’t have to have all the knowledge in your head at once; rather, you just need to know the order of the steps. The idea behind my organization was sound; however, my presentation style defeated the aforementioned purpose in that I rushed through the steps too quickly for them to be absorbed individually. This was a key part of my lesson and I only spent a quarter of the allotted time on these five steps. This means that on average I devoted 30 seconds to each step, which is not a whole lot of time to absorb new knowledge. Were I to do it again, I would double the amount of time spent on this part of the presentation, mainly by slowing down my speech and by drawing more connections between new knowledge and common knowledge. I ended my presentation by applying the five steps of beer making to a discussion on how different variations of beers come about. So once again, I was taking prior knowledge (that there are countless varieties of breweries and styles) and using new knowledge to explain how these varieties are produced. From a cognitive perspective, this is an effective teaching method because it accesses the part of the students’ brain already being used to store related information. This part of my presentation might have been better, however, were it integrated into the five steps mentioned above instead of just discussed at the end. Were it integrated, I would have spent more time on each step and would have been more consistently engaging students’ minds by connecting to things they know and have interest in. There was also some modeling taking place in that I demonstrated enthusiasm for the topic as well as a little humor here and there which translated (I learned from post-lesson feedback) into my audience being engaged and enthusiastic about learning. |
From a sociocultural perspective, my beginning and ending were my best parts because they had clearly stated goals and because the audience was allowed to participate directly by asking and answering questions. I also made efforts to relate my topic (how beer is made) to the culture of drinking as it exists in my audience’s lives by giving examples of beers they would recognize and talking about how to go about making a selection.
A sociocultural theorist would more than likely argue, however, that my lesson was too teacher focused. There was direct student involvement at the beginning and end, but even this consisted of interactions between the individual student and the teacher. There were no student-student interactions, nor were there hands-on elements to the lesson. It was approximately 30% question-and-answer, 30% visual presentation, and 40% verbal lecture. A sociocultural theorist (and many modern education scholars) would argue that my students would have been more engaged and would have learned better were they involved more frequently in activities more social than simply watching and listening. All in all, I think my lesson was more successful than not because it was well-organized, it drew on the existing knowledge and interests of the audience, and it was presented in a clear and enthusiastic manner. Hands-on, more social elements would have helped engage the students in a greater variety of ways. For instance, I could have brought in samples of hops, barley, and yeast, and then passed them around. It would have also been better if I had taken more time on each part to make sure that the information sunk in before moving on to new things. |