WTL Reflection

With every lesson I do, whether it is 5 minutes long or 20 minutes long, I always find myself to be incredibly nervous before I begin to teach the lesson. For this lesson, I was no different, but in a way I don't think that will ever go away. A good amount of nervousness is needed (at least for me) because then I know that I actually care about what I am doing, but once I get up in front of a class, all the nervousness goes away and it was the same with this lesson. I really enjoyed my topic and when I was preparing this lesson about carousel brainstorming, I tried coming up with a topic where students could generate many ideas. Also when preparing I ran it thought in my head a few times to make sure I was getting all of my information about the actual strategy that was needed. I felt like the lesson went very well overall; starting out with an example on the board was helpful because then they knew what I was looking for when they went on their own to do the activity. I hope that my classmates took away that this is an easy activity to get students thinking about a certain topic and also a good way for them to notice other student's ideas that they maybe would have not thought of on their own. I think they took away that it can be a fun activity and can also be community building at the right time. If I had to do the lesson differently, I probably would have came up with more in-depth questions in order to make them use higher level thinking, although time constraints are always a problem. I also could have facilitated the directions about where to move to the next poster before the activity started. Overall I think it was a very successful, short lesson!