RTL Reflection

For the RTL activity I taught my students (my peers) about Shade Gardens.  I took the information in the handout and modified it to enhance the student’s learning.  I modified it by actually printing pictures offline of the different plants because the plants in the handout were not visually clear.  Then I took those pictures and put them on index cards and wrote out the definition of the plants on a separate index card which served as the match.  For the activity of the lesson I created a memory game which required students to repeat the definition upon finding a match.  I did this because it was hands on and it helped to empower the students to be responsible for their own learning.  Below are some of the positives as well as things that need more attention that I reflected on from my presentation.

Positives:

·         The introduction of the Shade Garden lesson was good because it was very through. 

·         The students understood the goals and how to play memory

·         The two groups worked well together

·         I enjoyed the fact that it was a group assessment I think that it served as a reward for the students because they worked very well together to decipher the material

Needs More Attention:

·         My grammar could be improved.  I used the word “has” instead of “have”

·         The activity might have been better if I would of used one group of five students instead of two small groups

·         Time Management: The lesson was very short so the rules could have been more simplistic from the beginning

o   For example instead of having students only flip one card over at a time to try and find a match in memory they could have been allotted three cards to try to match at a time to increase their chances of finding a match at a faster rate. 

o   This would have enabled the students to have more time to strengthen their understandings of the definitions of the shade garden plants. 

·         Another way to improve this would be to review the definitions and distinguishing characteristics as a class prior to administering the assessment. 

·         I am not sure what I could have done differently besides being the time keeper but I wish I could have had a more integral part with the learning and helping the information to “click.”

·         Towards the end of the assignment I should have made sure that the answer key matched the assessment that I gave the students, but nonetheless that was not pertinent to the lesson

o   Even though it was a mistake the only negative affect was it took more of my time to correct it, it did not hinder the student’s scores