What I gleaned from these reflections was that I graded myself relatively more harshly than how my peers graded me. This shows that the lesson generally went well and was enjoyable. However I did give myself a 3 for organization, whereas most of my peers gave me a 2. I think it is because my pacing wasn't well prepared. I had a good structure to my slides and things I wanted to do. The problem was that I added some extra things to the slides because I thought they were interesting. Those slides contained more information that were harder to differentiate from each other. I brushed by them quickly since time was so limited. A thing I learned was that topics that are interesting to me may not be as interesting to my students, at least when they haven't had the time to taste samples of richness. Giving more time for the listeners to refresh and go over questions/earlier concepts would help reinforce learning. Again, 10 minutes wasn't a lot of time, but it was great practice. I say this because if I can keep my mind focused and my lessons short/succinct in a short period of time (not giving out too many details at first), then I am sure to be able to get through my lessons during the allotted time for a class period. My topic chosen on semantics was interesting. My peers were fascinated with how words and sentences relate to each other. They liked how they had to come up with some examples amongst themselves. The quiz at the end helped put what they learned into practice. For my next micro teaching I would definitely cut down a slide or two and spend some time reviewing and adding fewer examples (since I had too many initially). Providing a sheet with terms and definitions would help too.
Thanks, Michael! It's great to see your thoughtful reflections on this short microteaching exercise. You chose a very interesting topic, and I can see that you are learning a lot from each opportunity to do some teaching. Keep up the great work!
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