Class 3/25/14

Last class we were able to observe teachers collaborating in order to produce a lesson plan. I was able to see exactly what happens when teachers plan together. The two teachers who are working together to teach a class collaborated very well, and were able to bounce ideas off one another in order to discover the best way to teach their students. It went very smoothly, which I was impressed by how well they worked together. I think teacher collaboration is a great thing because it allows ideas from two people to be discussed, and in the end only the best ideas from each person are incorporated into a lesson plan. This allows the lessons to be stronger and more efficient. I would love to be able to work with another teacher to design lesson plans because it will be much more beneficial to the education of my students. For my lessons that I am required to teach this semester I plan on collaborating with another student in my class to teach at least one lesson. It will be interesting to see which will be more effective, the one I teach alone or the one I teach with another student.

Another thing I learned from last class was the importance of asking questions that force students to think critically. This is something that I need to practice doing, because I have noticed myself asking simply, knowledge based questions in the past, which is way at the bottom of Bloom’s Taxonomy. I will make sure to use more of these higher thinking questions when I teach my lessons this semester. I will try my best to get use to the awkward silence that usually follows when I ask these sorts of questions. I believe this is something I can easily get better at with practice and determination. The Importance of Higher Thinking Questioning