Jazmin Roe

February 29, 2016

Group Issues Presentation Reflection

I really enjoyed teaching an issues presentation because I got to
understand my own teaching style and practice a lesson before my micro
teach. I learned that my body language is very open because I use a lot of
expressions and hand movements. I also spoke loudly and stressed certain
statements. One of my classmates actually came up to me after the lesson
and complimented me on how expressive my body language was while I was
teaching the class. He said he could tell I was excited about what I was
teaching and confident in my delivery of the lesson. My co-teachers also
thought that I was very good at getting the class involved and facilitating
group discussions, so they assigned me tasks that would show this strength.
To help facilitate discussion I tried to give my own examples, showed an
exemplar of the activity, commented on what each group was saying and
gave my attention to who was speaking. As a teacher having class
participation, discussions and leadership roles is really important to me.
One part I found kind of hard by being in a group of three was
facilitating who was speaking and how much time to devote to each section.
My group decided that to make transitions more smooth it was important to
acknowledge what the other teacher stated and relate it to what would be
taught next in the lesson. I think as a group we could have been more
specific or given specific examples of the topics we were teaching about. For
example, when we stated one of the major issues that teachers found with
Inclusive Education was the lack of resources we could have listed what
resources specifically were lacking. For me I found timing was the hardest
part of the lesson and I felt limited with how specific we could be on our
topic. I also noticed that we didnt mention how regular classrooms in high
school were already separated by the -1 and -2 streams in Alberta.
I also thought our group used a variety of resources such as a graph, a
video with strategies to help create an inclusive environment, and lists of the
pros and cons. We also had a quick class discussion and a bigger discussion
at the end. I thought the flow of the lesson worked really well and the group
activity did not feel rushed. I really liked how the other group used analogies
during their presentation, so the students could remember and relate to
what was being taught. There were a few places during our lesson that could
have included analogies as well. We also made sure we told students how
much time they would have for the activity by giving a countdown for the
number of minutes they had left. We also would wrap-up what we were
saying before moving onto something else during the lesson.
Some things I felt I could personally work on was making sure my
instructions were clear and watching how I worded what I wanted students to

Jazmin Roe
February 29, 2016

do. There were a few instructions I would have explained in a different way or
made clearer. One way to do this would have been to ask the students if they
understood the instructions or had any questions about what I was asking. I
also wanted to write the objectives on the board, so that the class could
clearly see what we wanted them to learn from the lesson.