General Notes: Class opened with Kristina passing out student note cards. These cards had info for the students as well their pictures, and also served as a tool for group work. Through these cards, the students also checked in their attendance for the day. For a warm-up activity, Kristina wrote down puzzles on the
black board: brain teasers that were a jumble of phrases or ideas. A great way
to get students thinking, and it seemed to be quite effected at opening the
students up verbally as well as mentally for the morning’s activities. After the warm up, the students had their cards, the extra cards were collected and counted for the absent students. Kristina then moved into the Self Evaluation activity for Assignment 3, which the students then turned in. The Self assessment asked the students to consider six questions pertaining to assignment 3; these questions evaluated what the student was trying to say, who might be interested, what they liked best in their paper, what they liked least, what they might work on if they had another 24 hours to complete the assignment, and what they would do different with the assignment and why. Then the students filled out a three-page mid-semester feed
back form. Quite brilliant, the students respond anonymously to Kristina’s
teaching, and she receives immediate feedback from her students. This seemed to
motivate them with a chance for direct feedback. The students then paired up and defined analysis. They had a brief five minutes to do this, and when they were done the class had a general discussion about the definitions that they came up with. Kristina wrote the answers on the board, then she proceeded to introduce Assignment 4. A great activity and transition. Overview: Over all, I think Kristina handled her class very well. She had plenty of activities to fill the time, and allowed for enough movement among the students to keep them motivated. The puzzle-warm up was a neat idea, but it might be better as a power point presentation since the students were solving the puzzles faster than Kristina could look them up most of the time, which made the pacing a little choppy. The self evaluation seemed to work well, the students were diligent
and quiet, no one disrupted the class. Again, I think the self evaluation
questions would be better in a pre-created power point, or assignment sheet,
because it seemed that Kristina was behind the desk a little too much; this is
just a personal feeling of mine, since I don’t like to stand up at the front of
the room, but rather walk around as the students work. I find walking around
the room opens the students up for questions, and dismantles the mundane
linearity of the typical classroom dynamic. Again, the mid-semester evaluation was quite brilliant. It
took the student’s mind off of papers and grades, and got them engaged
willingly in thought about the classroom. I noticed a pick up in student energy
after this, which makes me want to adopt a similar method for my own course. Having the students pair up and define analysis as a way into assignment 4 worked seamlessly. This created a common vocabulary for the class to work with as Kristina transitioned into assignment 4. Overall I appreciated Kristina’s teaching method. She seemed to be prepared with a variety of activities which broke from the everyday “let’s get down to writing and analysis” type activities. I felt that she could have walked around a little more to open up the instruction; but in her defense, she kept the students so busy with so many activities so fast that I can see why she would need to be up front, holding the reigns as it were. Unfortunately, I had some last-minute surprises in my lesson
plans, and had to go prepare for my class at 9:30: so I left Kristina’s class
around 8:40-8:50, but I got the general idea for the class room, and the lesson
plan and daily objectives that Kristina provided me suggested that she had more
than enough planned out for the seventy minutes in class. |