IPT 301 Teaching Reflection

We tried to incorporate the same principles of teaching and learning that we were discussing into our lesson. This included constructivism: both individual and social, disequilibrium, and methods adaptation. We hope that by using a lot of class participation, the ideas would be more likely to be processed into long term memory.

One main focus of our presentation was constructivism and comparing and contrasting individual and social constructivism. In order to incorporate this principle into our presentation we divided the class in half and game them a math problem. We had half of the class try to figure out the problem in groups so that they were participating in social constructivism and the other half had to work independently to solve the problem to demonstrate individual constructivism. We then had the class talk about the advantages and disadvantages that they came across while working in groups or independently.

We also implemented disequilibrium into our lesson by asking the class a couple of questions that are commonly answered incorrectly. Sure enough, the class answered these based on the common misconceptions and we then told them that they were incorrect which made them want to learn what the answers really were. By making the class think they were correct about something and then telling them otherwise, they were driven to discover the real information. This demonstrated to everyone that they could use this same principle with their elementary students.

Adaptation was also implemented into our lesson as we gave the class the animal sorting task. We were then able to discuss the methods the class used to sort the animals and find out who used assimilation, accommodation, or avoidance. Seeing this in a real life situation made it easier to see how these would look in a child.

I think that one of our strong points in our teaching was that we used a lot of class participation. By asking the class to participate and truly experience some of the principles we were teaching, they were able to get involved and understand. We also spent a lot of time preparing and had planned what we were going to talk about.

We had a weakness in the area of time management. We obviously spent too much time in the earlier parts of our lesson because we were already running out of time before we got to the assessment. Another area where we were weak is we could have discovered more about schemes and operations because we were still a little shaky in these areas. Next time we could definitely be better managers of time and be better prepared to answer any questions that the class may have.