Culture Lesson Reflection

I think that overall, my groups culture lesson went very well. Our biggest challenge

when planning the lesson was trying to incorporate the different learning styles which meant

making sure there were visuals, and a video to go along with the content on the slides. I think

that we created a good enough interaction during the lesson. To start off the lesson, we had

everybody talk in pairs about what they knew, prior to the content taught, about Ireland. This

fostered the topic and got students engaged. We had some slides with discussion questions

which continued the interaction however, if we did the lesson again, I think that we could

create more interaction perhaps with another activity planned. It is so important for teachers to

make sure that they are not dominating the discussion, as students may start disengaging.

I think that my co-teacher, Grace, and I worked very well together. Co-teaching means

that the content being taught to the students is done between two teachers. One teacher is not

supposed to dominate the conversation and I don’t think that this was an issue. I feel as if Grace

and I followed the team-teaching strategy. We both planned, taught, and assessed alongside

each other and carried the same responsibilities. When we moved from to slide to slide, we

both had incorporated information on each one and had something to say after the other was

done speaking. We handled the discussion questions and assessment well as we would both get

the chance to ask students for the answers and provide them with our thoughts. If we were to

teach this lesson again, I think that one way we might approach co-teaching differently is

perhaps having one teacher explain something and having the other show a means of modeling

it whether that is through their own actions or writing on the board. Teachers must be careful

when co-teaching that students do not get distracted if they are doing different things.
 I believe that we did achieve our objectives. Our first objective was that “students will

be able to recall the main language and religion of Ireland”. We achieved this through our

content slides on language and the religion as well as an explanation and breakdown of each

area. The second objective was the “students will be able to describe the parts of the Irish

government and identify one fun fact”. This was achieved as we brought up multiple facts

throughout the slides about different fun facts, such as Halloween originated in Ireland. We

also did a very thorough breakdown of the government as it can be very confusing to many. I

think that our assessment was effective. We had a worksheet with fill ins, matching, and open-

ending questions. I think that the worksheet covered everything we had discussed. If we had

another opportunity to teach this lesson, I think that maybe we could’ve made it more engaging

for students and have a fun game to play.

We had visuals on a lot of our slides to give students another means of grasping the

concepts being taught. I think that we could’ve added more visuals, possibly to the government

and education slides as students would be able to get a feel inside of the Irish classrooms. I

think we did a good job of not fully reading off the slides. We put the important points on the

slides rather than having everything we were going to say up there. This would be too

overwhelming for students.

Before doing the lesson, I thought that we would not have enough time to complete

everything as we had around 10 slides, discussion questions, a video, and an assessment.

However, when doing the lesson, I believe that we went a little bit too quickly. I think that we

explained everything thoroughly but perhaps could’ve implemented a better video and pictures
to discuss more. If we were to teach the lesson again, I think that we should’ve practiced

together and made sure to have more to discuss with extra time.