Today I taught my last class and was sad to say goodbye to my students. It was also the longest class I have taught - 2 hours. We were working on writing a cover letter, and by the end of the class, the students should have their cover letters written.
I have implemented the following suggestions from my class instructor:
I allowed tools access for my students for the whole lesson. It was interesting to see their cursors floating around the screen, and that's how I knew who was staying most active.
I tried to engage them more this time and added more student-centred activities like polls and quizzes.
I wanted to share some Christmas music with the students for their independent assignment but, unfortunately, encountered some technical issues, although everything worked fine before the lesson. Also, the teacher praised me for checking in with the students to make sure everyone was ok with it. One of the students wasn't, so I suggested that she keep the computer's sound off.
I often ask the students to underline/circle words and phrases and students seem to enjoy it.
When I saw that the students were getting tired, I offered to do a fun 2 min stretch. Some of them got up on their feet, others remained seated, but all of them were happy to take a little break.
Some of the things I could tweak net time:
It's good to do quizzes and other fun activities together as a class, but sometimes it's ok to let students do it independently too. I could have shared the link with them in the shared notes and let them do it on their own.
For the writing assignment, I put each student into a breakout room, and they had to share their screens with me when I joined their rooms. However, it took some students very long to complete the assignment when others completed their tasks in a short amount of time. Unfortunately, a couple of students haven't completed the task in class and had to finish it at home. I should have asked the students to write their cover letters on paper first - it would take less time, and they would be able to finish everything in class.
Please see the lesson plan here
Comments