Mathematics Year 8 Assessment 1, 2021

Reflection Report
By Ilan Malesev

This report will compare and evaluate three teaching strategies in mathematics, in the context of
how it helped me to learn. The three strategies I will cover are Chalk and Talk, Student Paced:
Textbook and Maths Online: Flipped Classroom.

Chalk and Talk is a teaching strategy where the teacher delivers the content by writing it on the
board and the students copy it into their workbooks. This strategy is useful as it allows the students
to easily see the content and work at their own pace - it helps the students to understand the
content because they can look ahead at examples or look back at the key ideas. In addition, this
strategy is helpful in maths because examples and diagrams can be used to show the ideas. Chalk
and Talk allowed me to easily catch up if I fell behind. This strategy was mostly effective for me. I got
all the content down in my book and understood the key ideas. The only downside is that it was not
memorable, and I found I was more likely to forget the content compared to other maths lessons.

Student Paced: Textbook is a strategy where the teacher sets questions in the textbook. The
students read the questions off their computers or a physical textbook and complete the working
out in their workbooks. This was a useful strategy because the content is always available so I could
flip back to it anytime and I could learn at my own pace. This led to successfully learning the content
in an easily understandable way. By working at my own pace, I was able to spend more time on
areas I wasn’t confident in. Student Paced: Textbook had graphs and diagrams, which was useful
because images help me to better understand the content and questions. It also allowed me to ask
questions when needed. There were no downsides to this strategy.

Maths Online: Flipped Classroom is a teaching strategy where the teacher sets a maths online task,
and the students watch the video and learn the content at home. They then complete the work
during class time. This strategy was not very effective for me. Some of the students in class stated
that they had not watched the video or forgot to watch it and had to learn it during class. The video
was quite boring which made it hard to concentrate and the content could be partially forgotten by
the time you get to class. There were sections I did not completely understand, which made it hard
as I could not ask the teacher questions. On reflection I realised I had to pay more attention for it to
be helpful. I also reflected that I prefer a real teacher over a video. It was, overall, an ineffective
strategy as I did not fully understand the content when I got to class.

Some teaching strategies were more effective at conveying the content than others. Chalk and Talk
and Student Paced: Textbook allowed me to work at my own pace and ask the teacher questions if I
needed. In contrast, as Maths Online: Flipped Classroom was a mostly ineffective strategy, I did not
fully understand the work during class, which slowed me down. Overall Student Paced: Textbook
was the most effective and efficient strategy because the work was available and I could easily flip
back and forth and refer to other information, as I needed it.