On July 17th I had my second hour of teaching in the practicum. In my first lesson for my closing activity, I asked the students to share with me what they were hoping the Conversation Cafe would help them with. Almost all of the students replied they would like to work on speaking and presenting the information. I was really excited because it gave me a more clear picture of how to best meet my students’ needs. I also gave the students a bit of “homework” by asking them to come prepared for this class with two truths and one lie to play a game.
To start the lesson I wanted to learn about how the students felt about giving a presentation. I asked the students to write an adjective into the shared notes. Immediately, I was surprised by the number of adjectives that expressed comfort and confidence in presenting. I thought that this might be the case because I used a positive word to describe my attitude. However, I did see some students write that it made them feel nervous or awkward. I then began a small explanation with my tips on giving a clear presentation. I tried to use the polling and the interactive whiteboard. I noticed right away that the interactive whiteboard was not going to be the most effective tool as the students started wanting to play instead of focusing on the task.
We then went on to give our small presentations without game. When each student started talking it was easy to tell who was nervous and who felt really confident in their abilities. I made sure to check off who I felt landed in each category. I believe this will be helpful as I move students into activity groups in the future. When I started the activity, I realized I didn’t make it as inclusive as I wanted, but I was able to fix this throughout the lesson by using the polling feature. This was great because it gave everyone an opportunity to answer and keep them engaged in the lesson.
I really liked how this lesson helped me learn about each student and I am going to keep this going forward. My goal for the next lesson is to give opportunities for the students to engage with each other.