Teaching Reflection - Motivation

Lily and I taught our lesson on motivation. We used many hands on activities that required student participation, to provide them with a better learning. For our handout we used a bingo, which is a fun activity in which most students love participating in. The bingo was also one of the activities we did. I believe that a bingo being an engaging activity, where it takes student’s attention and participation can benefit them with memorable ideas from the lesson. On the bingo students had to match a term to its definition, as they were called by the teacher. The students will probably remember this information for a longer period of time, since it was learning it in such a natural way. Another principle we used was to tie examples and activities to students lives, so they could relate to them and also to activate students’ background. In the beginning of our lesson we had the students write down what motivated them to accomplish their academic tasks, so that helped them relate to the lesson and become a little more interesting on the topic.
I think we used the activities we used as a helpful way for students to learn and remember what they were expected to acquire from the lesson. In brief words the students were able to go up to chart paper that had questions on the walls and answer basic questions, but ones that would help them remember the most important concepts about the lesson. A lot of the questions were based on examples or how the concept was applied, for example: give an example of a performance-approach goal and a performance-avoidance goal. The students were able to think in groups and came up with meaningful and correct answers. I believe we did not use our time wisely during the lesson, I think we got a little carried away talking, when we should have focused more on giving the students more time to complete their activities. Something I would do differently is limit instruction from teacher and even include more activities in there, that students would be able to attain the information even better. I believe that for a future time I could engage students more not only in doing the activities, but in participating more during teacher instruction. Maybe elaborate questions that would make them tell me, instead of me telling them. Using that saying “don’t tell them, what they can tell you.” Other thing I would change is about our visual aids. I personally learn better seeing things and with hands on activities. I think a video or some memorable pictures about the subject would help students a lot, with remembering the information being taught.