Reflection

Overall, this lesson ran smoothly with students engaged in the task for over 80% of
the lesson, majority of the class moving on to the extension task, and students asked
relevant questions.
During the class discussion, using the pop-stick method ensured students were
ready to share if their names were drawn, but often relaxed and disengaged once
their name was called. This can be altered by putting their pop stick back into the
contained opposed to leaving it out. This could cause an issues if the same names
are called multiple times while other aren’t at all. Drawing a pop stick and simply
choosing a student who I would like to share could help this issue if it does start
occurring next time.
Students were able to choose their own groups or partnerships during this task, and
while some students made good choices, others were either allowing their partner to
do a majority of the work or distracting each other. Moving the students who were
not working well helped the situation throughout the lesson and by the end most
students were placed with partners who would benefit their learning and on task. To
avoid this next time, choosing partners for the students will take longer at the start
but be better overall as behaviour management will be less of a focus.
Student position was also important. I chose to keep all student in the class for this
lesson opposed to sending select groups to work in the corridor outside of the
classroom. I chose to do this as I wanted to make sure all students understood the
task and were working, as well as able to talk to other groups for ideas and
discussion. While this was a useful strategy, there were groups spread all over the
class and the volume was high, as well as some students were getting distracted by
other in the room. In future lessons it could be useful to send students who I trust to
work well outside as they would enjoy it and I wont have to worry about them
disrupting other classes. It is also tempting to send a disruptive group outside to
calm the whole class atmosphere, but risk them not doing any work and disrupting
other classes or people outside of their class. I will also have to spend much more
time outside with them.
Overall, the lesson went well but still has room for improvement and I will strive to
implement these ideas into future lessons.