Reflections on Teaching Website Evaluation

One week ago I taught a two day lesson on website evaluation to 3 different 7th grade keyboarding classes.  I was evaluated by my university advisor on day 1 of the lesson, which gave me a lot to think about and adjust.  My outline and presentation for day 1 can be found here:

• Day 1 Prezi - The 5 W's (and 1H) and Day 1 outline

 The notes and comments on my presentation from day 1 were eye-opening (in a good way).  What I took away from the students' behaviors and later discussion with my university advisor was that, in a nut shell, I needed to talk less and question more!  Something else that really stood out was my need for differentiating instruction.  Yes, I had visuals and audio (in the form of whole class discussions), but I didn't have anything for hands-on learners (which we all are, really), nor did everyone contribute to the class discussion.  I also need to start and end each lesson with short activities that either recall the previous day's lesson or move the day's lesson into long-term memory.

My university advisor suggested I use a technique called "Turn and Talk".  Essentially, rather than posing questions to the class as a whole and getting answers from only one or two people, the teacher poses questions to the class and then has the students turn and talk it over with the person sitting beside them.  In this way, students who don't know what's going on get to talk it over with students that do, shy students who don't usually speak up in class get a chance to join the discussion, and students actually have time to think things over and come up with some good solutions!  The rules of "Turn and Talk" are discussed at the beginning of the period: discussions need to stay on topic, the teacher's hand going up signals the end of the discussion time, etc.

I tried this technique once on day 1 and during all three classes on day 2, and I got some great results and also some just okay results.  Some of the classes really got into the "Turn and Talk" - they stayed on topic and had some great ideas to share at the end.  Other classes did not stay on topic and weren't any more willing to share at the end of discussion time.  I'm not sure if the issue here is the students' behavior, or maybe it's that I need to ask better, more interesting questions.  Overall, I think this is an incredibly useful and easy to implement technique, and I'll keep tweaking it as I teach in the future.

I waited until after my critique of day 1 to create my second Prezi.  My outline and presentation for day 2 can be found here:

• Day 2 Prezi - Databases! and Day 2 outline

There are some notable changes to my day 2 presentation:

• Less words, more images.
• Less slides, leaving more time for discussion and activities.
• An introductory "Turn and Talk" slide.
• Less of me talking, more questioning the class.
• More opportunities for students to work "hands on" at their own computers.

Overall, I was pretty happy with the way things were shaping up by the end of day 2.  I'm going to apply everything I learned into my next unit on critical literacy and advertising, so hopefully next week's evaluation will be more Satisfactories and Proficients and less Needs Improvements!