Week 15 Reflections

After thinking about how I could have changed my statistics lesson, the only thing that I would have changed is possibly the card activity. I feel like I should have had all of the cards have the same pattern so that all students would have had the same opportunity to memorize all of the letters. This way there would have not been a control on the activity because after thinking about it I think that the card activity was an experiment because of the two different patterns. Other than that I feel like my lesson went pretty well. I think that my classmates like the guided discovery approach to my lesson rather than direct instruction. I think that is one thing that I have learned through this class and MATHS 393 that guided discovery is a very important teaching method. So many times direct instruction is only used and this puts all students at a disadvantage because they are never discovering anything independently. I think direct instruction still needs to be used in many circumstances, but I think using guided discovery is very important in every mathematics classroom.

The difference between teaching my module and my statistics lesson is that I felt like I was just giving the class worksheets to complete for my module, but I felt like I was in charge when I was teaching my statistics lesson. I think I feel this way because for my module I was working with two other people, but for my statistics lesson I was solely in charge of presenting my lesson to the class. I think when presenting in the TinkerPlots group, I did not feel like I needed to take charge because I did not want to seem like a dominant personality out of Andrew, Steve, and I. Knowing that I was in charge of my statistics lesson, it felt much more natural to take charge of the class.