Videotape Analysis
After watching myself teach a lesson I feel that I am much more able to critique my teaching style and it has helped me to see the things I do well while teaching in addition to the things that I should try to improve upon. The lesson that was taped was the first of two lessons comparing and contrasting the political beliefs of Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson.
I had three learning objectives for this lesson: 1) Students will be able to compare the beliefs that Jefferson and Hamilton had for their vision of the United States; 2) Students will be able to identify remnants of both Hamilton’s and Jefferson’s visions in our government today; 3) Students will be able to make predictions on how Hamilton and Jefferson’s ideals would affect the country in different ways. Since I was unable to complete the entire lesson in one day and spread it out over the course of two days, I was only able to meet the first learning objective for this lesson. I feel as though I completely met this objective as students were able to compare both men’s major differences through the slide show presentation, where I made sure to emphasize the main differences. This learning objective was expanded in the next lesson when I distributed a t-chart comparing both men’s beliefs on a variety of topics.
I feel like each part of the lesson flowed fairly easily into each other but I think it would have been better. I feel like the lesson only flowed well together because there was a sort of natural progression from easy activities to harder activities, but each activity was distinct from each other and they did not lead well into each other. I think the transitions could have been smoother if each activity naturally flowed into each other and they were not so distinct from each other. I ran out of time on this lesson because I had to distribute student evaluations at the end of the period and because I decided prior to the lesson to break it up into two days and to combine it with parts of the next lesson. But the point at which I stopped was still a natural point to stop, so it was not as if I was unable to complete all I wanted to do for this lesson. In order to fix this problem next time I will make sure that my lesson plans do not contain as many things as they did in this unit. This was a problem throughout my entire unit where I had too much material or it simply took much longer to complete than I anticipated, so a lesson that I thought would take only one day ended up taking two to complete.
I feel like my questioning abilities are decent simply because I had some good questions prepared for this lesson but I think my ability to think of questions on my feet and to use follow up questions definitely needs to be developed. I think a strength of my questioning in this lesson was that it really made the students think and they were not always simple, closed ended questions, but instead were usually open ended questions which required a student to explain this answer. I felt like I used sufficient wait time in between my questions and my follow up questions, but that is probably due to me needing a few seconds to think of a question or to think of how to phrase a question. I feel like once I become more experienced at thinking of questions on my feet I might lose this wait time, so it is something I need to be conscientious of as I become better at thinking on my feet. I did call on a range of students throughout my lesson but there are definitely a couple students whom I seemed to favor. I had realized this at other points when teaching my unit and I try to correct it but it is something that I still need to be aware of.
The climate in the classroom was fairly calm and controlled throughout the class. The biggest management problem I had throughout teaching my unit was the students talking when they should not be, and it still was not as bad as some other classes that I have experienced. Behaviorally they are excellent students, they just enjoy talking. Usually if they were talking I was able to quiet them down just by waiting for them to be quiet or by saying shh.
I never felt like I had any difficulties with classroom routines. When giving directions I usually verbally gave them from the front of the room and generally I tried to repeat them once or twice to make sure that everyone understood. Often I would distribute papers by myself to the class but if there were multiple papers to distribute I would ask someone to help me so that I did not waste as much time. Many times I gave directions while I was distributing papers so I was able to get two things done at once. I think the only way I could improve this would be if I had students distribute or collect papers all the time so that I do not have to leave the front of the room to do it, but I think the way in handling organizational factors like these will vary from class to class based upon the way the furniture in the class is organized. My class was easy for me to walk around in, but in other classrooms it might be more difficult, so I may not be able to personally distribute papers to every student in other classrooms. Overall I felt I was very organized and did not waste much time on classroom routines.
After watching my video I noticed that I had a couple person al idiosyncrasies. The first thing I noticed was that I paced around the front of the room and had a lot of hand motions. This may be because I was nervous or just because I am still getting used to being in front of a class. I think with time and more experience I will learn to calm down and be more relaxed in front of a class which may help to eliminate this. I also use the phrases “ok” and “alright” often after giving directions or making an important point in class. I think I am doing this to reassure myself that the students understand what I said so I am saying them to make sure that the whole class is on the same page. As I gain more confidence as a teacher I think these may slowly disappear or as my questioning skills get better and I am better able to recognize when students do or do not understand things then I may be able to eliminate this.
I think my voice when teaching is one of the things I do best. I seemed to speak very slowly, deliberately, and clearly so that it was very easy to understand myself talking on the video. I also noticed that when I am speaking about important things my voice slowed down and I added some emphasis to my voice to show that what I was saying was important. I think this is an excellent quality to have and I do not think that it is something I actively think about while teaching.
After watching my own lesson it has become easy for me to see that there certainly are some things that I can improve upon but I think at this point I am fairly impressed with how I am doing. I think once I learn to relax and enjoy teaching a bit more that I will hopefully be an excellent teacher. This video has certainly helped me to see areas that I need improvement in and I hope to work on those areas next year as a student teacher.