Watching Myself Teach

This post will be another part of me writing, planning, facilitating, and reflecting upon the first high school lesson I delivered.  In this piece, I will reflect on the video recording of my teaching.  I will observe and reflect on Mary Ellen's recording as it occurs chronologically.  The clip can be seen here: http://sharing.theflip.com/session/385045e7ffad0c0d9b10049f03803801/video/124472831

As I pose a question to the class there are two reactions: one of possible avoidance and one of eager excitement to contribute.  Off to my left is a student whose wide eyes shaded by his hand suggest he does not want to answer.  This occurrence suggests I need to work the room a bit more.  More students need to be engaged, not just those who volunteer.  The clip shows me moving around the room pretty well, possibly I could use this mobility to engage students who are reluctant to volunteer.

The eager excitement was the other extreme reaction to the question.  I have written about maintaining current volunteers while encouraging new voices here.  I will continue to use those strategies and explore new ones.  I also need to make sure I survey the entire classroom.  In reviewing the clip, I noticed a student who may have been outside of my range of sight raised his hand.  I should work towards decreasing my blind spots.  This reduction can be helped by my pacing around the room.

Another one of Lemov's glorified techniques is "Right is Right."  Too often teachers accept an answer which is 80% or less completely correct while they supply the rest of the answer.  This technique holds that teachers should push students to the completely correct answer.  I strove for this when I praised students for the evidence they had discovered, but also pushed them to search for deeper connects which specifically answered my question.  I used the phrase, "would anyone like to add to that?"  This congratulated the student who had already contributed yet left the door open for further/deeper answers.

This is the first time I have seen myself teach.  I appreciate how, upon reviewing the clip, I can review my blind spots.  I can also take note of what I believe is going well and what was not successful so as to increase the appearance of the former and dampen the effect of the latter.  Hopefully my next recording will have more interaction and feedback from the students and less blind spots.  If you notice anything which I have not written about, please add your observations and perspective below.