This artifact is from the first Delta course I took, “Delta: Teaching in the College Classroom”, in the fall of 2016. One of our class activities was to prepare a microteach on a subject within your field that you would present to the class. I first prepared a plan of my lesson, gave the lesson, received feedback from our classmates, and then was tasked with reflecting on the experience and incorporating feedback to improve my microteaching. I went through this process a second time, planning a revised lesson, giving it and then receiving feedback and reflecting on it.
This was my first introduction to reflective teaching, and was a very effective exercise. In my second reflection, I discuss how it was challenging to change the lesson because I had become attached to how I had given it the first time, and how I could understand how teachers could get stuck in ruts of not updating their curriculum even if it isn’t being effective. I think this was a useful thing for me to come to understand early on, as it solidified the importance of being a reflective and flexible instructor, even though it isn’t easy.
These four written pieces were prepared at different points in the semester, and by reading them chronologically I can see how my language evolves as I have experienced more of the course. In my second microteaching plan, it is clear that I am more familiar with a wider range of teaching strategies and tools that I was able to use to improve my lesson.
By experiencing this process twice, and ending on a reflective note, I was able to internalize the idea that things don’t always go according to plan, or even when they do, they may not have the outcome you expect. It was useful for me to see the amount of work that can go into preparing a good lesson, and become comfortable with the idea that I can, and should, always aim to improve. Gaining this understanding early on in my development as an instructor has been incredibly useful, especially later on in my development when I guest lectured at Madison College as part of my Teaching-As-Research internship project.
Microteach #1 September 26th 2016 Liz Laudadio
I will be teaching the class an introduction to acid and base chemistry. Acids and bases can be hard to teach because many people have preconceptions; typically, students only exposure to this topic is through foods they consider to be acidic, and they interpret bases as the opposite of that. I want to probe the class for these preconceptions to get a feel for their thinking going in to the class, and also address which of the preconceptions are misconceptions. I will do this by having groups of students discuss if they think a certain food item is acidic or basic, and why.
After that activity, I will ask students if any of them had a hard time with defining what acids and bases are. I will point out that chemists, too, had a hard time defining them, and that there are actually three commonly used definitions of acids and bases for this reason. I will go through what I think is the simplest definition, the Arrhenius definition, and from that introduce the idea of pH as a method for measuring how acidic or basic something is.
I will then use pH paper to test the pH of the food items from the discussion activity. This will introduce students to the idea that you can test for pH, and not just rely on definitions they are told of what acids and bases are. It will also show them that there is an explanation for why things are basic or acidic on a chemical level, since the chemistry of the solution causes the pH paper to change color. The pH test will also show the students whether or not their preconceptions are correct. This will hopefully be a more impactful reframing of their preconceived notions of acids and bases than simply telling them if they were right or wrong.
I will then draw the structures of the molecules involved in the acidity or basicity of the common food items on the board, and ask the class if they see any commonalities between them. I will go through one example of an acid/base reaction with one of the molecules, and then see if the class can predict the products of the acid/base reaction of another one of the molecules. I will close out the microteach reiterating the objectives of the class, and telling them what they will learn in the next class.
Acid and base chemistry is difficult to teach in a general chemistry course, because it is hard to explain to the students WHY these reactions happen. It isn’t until organic chemistry that students begin to understand why acid and base reactions occur in terms of stability. The definition of acids and bases that I will employ in this discussion involves the loss or gain of a hydrogen cation in each acid/base reaction. It is hard to explain to students why certain hydrogen ions are lost or gained in these reactions, and why others are not, without that deeper understanding of stability. I am hoping that by showing them multiple structures and having them point out commonalities between them, they will gain a basic understanding of the types of functionalities that acids and bases have.
The goal of the microteach is for students to leave with: 1) an understanding if their preconceptions were correct, 2) a general idea of how we measure acidity or basicity, and 3) the ability to predict the products of acid-base reactions based on the Arrhenius definition. I will support student learning through helping reconstruct preconceptions, checking in with questions about their understanding, providing examples and seeing if students are able to use those examples to further their own understanding.
Microteach #1 Reflection September 26th 2016 Liz Laudadio
Something that went well in my lesson was the hands-on activity that I began with. I could tell that it was going well because participants were actively engaged and discussing their predictions with their partners. Their engagement only increased when they had the opportunity to use the pH paper and discover the outcomes of their predictions on their own. I felt that this was a great way to capture the class’s attention early, and I felt that I kept that attention throughout the rest of the lesson. I received a lot of positive feedback about this activity, with participants saying they enjoyed the connection to commonly used food items, and how it challenged their preconceptions. In preparing this lesson I considered several iterations of this activity, and I feel that the style I went with worked very well and could be repeated in another lesson.
However, what didn’t go well in my lesson hinged on that activity. There was no clear connection between the pH scale, which I used to show the relative acidity/basicity of the common food items, and the last part of the lesson, where we worked through different acid/base reactions using molecular structures. I could feel the lack of transition while delivering my lesson, and though participants remained attentive, I could see some confusion and sensed some difficulty connecting the different aspects of my lesson. These transitions would have been a good opportunity for me to incorporate some metacognitive check-ins, which would have also given me some insight as to whether or not the class was still with me. Much of the constructive feedback I received was on the lack of connectivity between the pH scale and the lesson as a whole. My introduction of the pH scale didn’t resonate with the participants; the peripheral definition that I gave didn’t engage people. I think to improve this lesson I either need to eliminate the pH discussion and focus on developing a conceptual understanding of acid/base chemistry with students, or I need to provide more context for the pH discussion. Due to the introductory nature of this lesson, I will probably choose to go with the former.
Microteach #2 Plan November 7, 2016 Liz Laudadio
1. Predict, Explain, Observe, Explain
a. I will start my microteach with a PEOE activity, which is an active learning strategy. This strategy encourages metacognition, and also addresses preconceptions. It is a task that involves both forming predictions and supporting your predictions with evidence.
b. I will divide the class into four groups, two to a table / area in the room. I will hand out a jar of an aqueous solution to each group. I will tell them that these solutions are mostly water, and ask them to predict (on visual appearance) if there is a difference between their solution and the solution of the group closest to them, and then explain to the other group why they think that or not. I will then pass each group a strip of pH paper, and tell them that this paper can indicate differences between aqueous solutions by changing color. I will ask them to test their solution on the pH paper and observe the color change. I will then ask each group to explain what they predicted and observed to the other group. This is how I will introduce my enduring understanding.
2. Backwards Design
a. I will employ backwards design by emphasizing the enduring understanding of my lesson. Backwards design is the theory that instructors CAN and SHOULD prioritize their content BEFORE teaching. I have designed this new version of my lesson based on this enduring understanding, which is exactly what teachers should do when planning lessons.
b. After the pH strip activity, I will introduce my enduring understanding by writing it on the board: “MOLECULES in WATER can CHANGE the COMPOSITON of WATER itself.” The rest of my lesson will hinge on this enduring understanding.
3. Decision Making
a. Decision-making is an active learning strategy where students are presented with a higher-level Bloom’s task. They need to synthesize what they’ve learned to evaluate a situation and judge what they would do in a certain situation. This strategy supports metacognition by helping students see if they are grasping the class content or not.
b. After a short lecture about acids & bases, I will introduce the following decision making situation: “You are a researcher in a laboratory doing a chemical reaction. You accidentally spill a large volume of a STRONG acid on the floor. What can you do to make the spilled acid less dangerous? Talk with your group mates about a strategy, or if you need more information to make a decision.” After a few minutes, I will reconvene the class and see if anyone thought of the correct answer: use a base to neutralize it. I will then give students an example of a neutralization reaction by pouring the baking soda solution (Basic) into the vinegar solution (acidic) and testing the pH afterwards (neutral!)
Mictroteach #2 Reflection December 12th, 2016 Liz Laudadio
This microteach was more difficult to prepare for than my first one; not because it took more time, but because I had become attached to the way I presented the material the first time, and had to work undo it. I can clearly see how professors get stuck in ruts of teaching material the same way they are used to, even if it is not effective for their students. Despite being harder to plan, I was happy with the changes I made, and it made the teaching part easier and gave me a good framework to follow. I made changes to the activity I did in the first microteach to make it more of an active learning strategy. I attempted a PEOE, which led into my enduring understanding for the lesson. I received mostly positive feedback for the activity, with the one criticism being that I should have allowed more time for the second explain. For the students who saw both my microteaches, I am curious if they preferred one style of the activity over the other. I think I preferred the second way, but I’m not sure if I employed it as well as I had hoped to. I’m really glad that I brought it back together in the end, with the decision-making activity leading to a demonstration of a neutralization reaction. Not only did these two activities help frame my entire microteach, and lead into my enduring understanding, but I also got a lot of positive feedback on them, and people seemed really engaged in discussion with one another.
Despite my activities being well thought-out and executed, I did not connect them well to the other material, which was a 5 min lecture on acids and bases. In fact, I’m not sure I ever introduced that we would be talking about acids and bases. I did not put learning goals/objectives on the board before beginning, because I didn’t want to “give away” the activity. I now realize how important a framework is, and that it’s more important than trying to have a “surprise”. I also got comments that I used a lot of jargon in this section, which I wasn’t realizing in the moment.
For both of these microteaches, I had difficulty prioritizing how deep into the subject I should try to get. For my second microteach, I backed off on a lot of the technicalities of acids and bases – I did not introduce pH, nor did I show a ton of chemical structures. I still tried to show a couple structures, and a couple acid/base reactions, but I fear I went too quickly for them to be meaningful. It is hard being a chemist, knowing and understanding the details, and feeling like they are all important, to then distill (pun intended) the information down so that the key concepts and enduring understanding are retained.
If I were to repeat this microteach again, I would like to add in some formative assessment. I think that the decision making activity could be a good way to incorporate formative assessment. I could first ask students to individually write a 1 min essay response, and collect them to review later. Then I could have students discuss their ideas with their peers, so that it is still an active learning activity. Finally, we’ll do a report-out at the end of class.