Observation

This week I had my second observation from my supervisor. One of my goals for this year is to create more student led projects and have student led discussions. My supervisor and district have been pushing this idea for some time and so I decided to make it one of my smart goals for this school year. I attempted this for my observation...

Overall I think it went really well and the students enjoyed leading the class. I had each student present information they found on an artist that uses Illustrator. This was used as the introduction to the unit the students will have on Illustrator. After the presentations I talked with the students on what their thoughts were on leading the class and if they would like to do this more often...

The students responses were that they are not comfortable talking about something they don't know. (I agree with them) They don't feel like they could lead the class in learning these techniques and the software because they have no prior knowledge on the subject matter or software skills. This is something that I have been trying to explain to my district for some time now. It is hard for me to let the students teach each other when they don't know what they are doing, and if they just guess, then everyone will be learning the wrong thing.

I know that a lecture style class every day is not ideal, and I try to mix it up and give the students plenty of other opportunities to learn and make it fun... but peer teaching in my classroom is very challenging. When I can I allow the students to "present"... I hope that my supervisor sees it the same way...