Guest Teaching Reflections from Madison College

Reflections on teaching

Context

I wrote the following observations as part of my guest teaching experience at Madison College. This teaching took place in a general chemistry classroom, the same classroom that my Teaching-As-Research activities were being implemented in. Professor Nilhan Gunasekera taught two sections of this course. There were two lectures a week for each section; one section met at 8:30 am, and the other at 11:30 am. I gave two ~30 minute lectures to both sections, one at the end of the Tuesday class, the other at the beginning of the Thursday class. I also assisted with the lab activities that week, which was a large work packet that students worked on together to practice naming compounds. Below I reflect on each of my experiences lecturing. The reflections were written immediately after each lecture.

Initial Observations

I gave the same lecture twice on my first day of guest teaching, once in Professor Nilhan Gunasekera’s 8:30 am class, and again in his 11:30 am class. Nilhan taught the first half of class, and I observed. Nilhan introduced the unit of chemical nomenclature by breaking down what we already know / where we are at. He talked students through the following categories: What is matter? What makes it matter? What is it divided into? What makes an ionic vs a molecular compound? I thought this was a good way to start the class, review previous material, and set the stage for the lecture of the day. Nilhan asked many questions to the students during his lecture. Initially students were hesitant to respond, but participation increased over time. Most students would verbalize answers to Nilhan’s questions (even if some were quiet). This was a good reminder to me that it’s OK to let a question hang out there for a bit, and let students think for a minute.

Reflections on first iteration of lecture 1

Overall I think that my first lecture went pretty well. I was able to make adjustments that I had identified I should make after seeing Nilhan give the first half of the lecture, once I had seen what Nilhan had covered. Class participation was good throughout and I got through the amount of material that I expected that I would. While working through an example, some students offered the name of “dicalcium”, which made me realize that I hadn’t expressed that we don’t use prefixes when we are naming ionic compounds, a major differences between naming ionic and naming molecular compounds. I was able to explain this in that moment, hopefully correcting the misconceptions students had about that. When doing think-pair-share exercises with the class, I found that students needed more time to answer the questions than I would have anticipated, or would have allotted time for. In the future, I should keep this in mind. One thing that made this challenging was not really knowing the class or the typical pace of the class, and so I have a better idea about that now. While I did sit in on class, it was almost two months ago – it may have been worthwhile to sit in again closer to my unit, to see where students were at in terms of pace of lecture, pace of answering questions in lecture and participation. They were having good discussion in groups, with students asking each other questions and answering questions with and for each other. I think this was a good way to structure working on problems in class.

Nilhan’s biggest note for me was to slow down. I had gotten through naming fixed charge binary ionic compounds and variable charge binary ionic compounds, and he suggested that for the next lecture I just focus on the first part, the fixed charge. He said that this would give me more time to slow down, use repetition to my advantage, and allow adequate time for practice problems. Nilhan also suggested a different way for working through balancing charges of ions that I had been doing. I think his suggested method will be clearer for students. I realize in this discussion with him that I didn’t utilize writing on the board as much as I could. This was one instance where writing on the board could have provided more clarity for students, as well as an alternative strategy than what I had laid out in my slides. I should remember that while my slides are a guide, it can be helpful to write things out when working through examples and student questions. Nilhan also pointed out to me a few vocabulary things that I hadn’t thought of before. One was that when using the word “suffix” I should be sure to also say “the end of the word”, since students may not be familiar with the word “suffix”. The other was that I should go through what the Roman numerals are, in case students do not know what they are. One other thing he pointed out was that when students are doing practice problems, I should walk around the room to hear what they are talking about, and also so that if they have questions they can flag me down. The biggest points were to slow down, give more time to practice, walk around the room during practice, and use repetition more – both in what I say, and what I ask from the students to say. I will make these changes for when I give the 11:30 lecture.

Reflections on second iteration of lecture 1

I had an opportunity to give the same lecture again later that day. I was able to implement the changes that Nilhan suggested, and I think that it went well. I could feel that I had slowed down and spent more time on each example. I had students repeating ion names often throughout the lecture, during each example I gave as well as each practice question we worked through. In the first lecture Nilhan went through all the common anions that end with ide and had students say them all out loud. He didn’t do this in his section this time, so I was sure to do it as part of mine. I spent more time writing on the board, specifically for balancing the charges of Mg₃N₂ and introducing roman numerals. I had students call out what the roman numerals are and we went from 1 to 6 with that. I also walked around the room while students did practice questions, and had students flag me down 3 times. I was asked why prefixes weren’t used, when to use roman numerals, and how you figure out the charge from the periodic table. It was helpful to hear these questions because I was able to correct misconceptions and also recognize where there had been gaps between what I was teaching and what I assumed was already known by the students. Walking around also allowed me to see how much progress students had made in naming the different compounds and helped me to see that students in general needed more time with these exercises. I still feel like students will need more time than I probably will account for, so trying to leave more of a buffer for working through problems will be important for Thursday’s lecture. I will definitely need to run through Thursday’s lecture again to make sure it is not too long, and move things around if necessary. Nilhan and I talked briefly after the lecture and he agreed that I had been able to slow down. He complimented the way I handled correcting students when they got things wrong, which was something I hadn’t realized I was doing well, so that was nice to hear.

Reflections on lecture 2

For the second lecture, two days later, I was meant to have 30 minutes to finish up naming ionic compounds, introducing polyatomic ions and using them in naming formulas. Nilhan gave about a 5 minute introduction with reminders, and then I started around 8:35. I didn’t end my portion until 9:20, 15 minutes longer than we had accounted for, and I still didn’t get through everything. I was aware throughout that it was running long, and spoke with Nilhan while students were working about when to wrap up. He was OK with me going a little over and there was still plenty of time to teach about naming acids. In general I am noticing that everything takes a lot longer than I expected. Students are at all different levels so when we work on problems independently or even in small groups, it takes a long time. If I were to teach a similar course, I would want to incorporate more frequent formative assessment to see how students are doing and get an understanding of what that gap is. I think this class would benefit from some different structure in how class time is spent as well, not just pure lecturing, call and response, and independent working through problems. I think that more structured discussions, groups for working, things like jigsaw would all be useful for keeping students engaged. Feedback that I received from Nilhan was to do more problems out on the board. I had students work on 6 problems independently and then we went over them. This was a lot of talking on my part (and I could feel it) and then I saw Nilhan signaling to me to write things out. I think for the next class I will do the first 3 of these together and then have students do the final 3 on their own and then regroup. One oversight that I had was using parenthesis when naming polyatomic ions. Students were confused about how to write them and how to signify the charge. This is an example of the novice-expert gap working to my disadvantage, because this is something that is so second nature to me that I didn’t even think about needing to explain it.

The hardest thing has been not being tuned to the pace of the class. If this had been a longer process, it would have been helpful to see how Nilhan lectured the unit in a previous semester. I feel like my slides were not inherently longer than Nilhan’s so I am curious as to where my pacing differences are coming from. I do feel like I am at least getting more comfortable with the idea that nothing is going to be perfect the first time, and that’s okay. That as long as I am being reflective about what went well and what didn’t go well, I will be able to continuously improve. Operating as an expert in other parts of my life such as research, it is hard for me to stomach the idea that something I present isn’t going to be perfect. But I am becoming more comfortable with being reflective and making improvements. Having two lectures is a nice opportunity to do this in real time, since I can make adjustments between the first and second instances of the lecture each day.