Critique of Videoed Lesson

Yesterday, I had my lesson for Ms. Cornelius videoed, and thankfully I was able to watch it in its entirety before the video tape was eaten by the library VCR. Check Ruth's blog for a visual.

I am teaching 10th grade Geometry, and I had a lesson on postulates (facts), segments, rays, and opposite rays. To start, my set was awesome. I'd been losing points everyday for my set so I made sure it was great yesterday. We had to define postulates, so for my set I put up a transparency with "10 things you didn't know you didn't know." It had facts like, "Horses can't vomit, pigs can't look up into the sky, it's impossible to lick your own elbow..." Then, I asked them for a new title for the transparency, which they gave me "Facts," and there we had it -- they defined postulates. Oh, and it was really funny to watch five adults try to lick their elbows.

One thing I need to start doing is having everything on transparencies, already written transparencies, because I'm left-handed. If I write on the board, I can't look at the class; and if I write on the transparency, they can't see what I'm writing. I also need to start using many different colors of dry erase markers to illustrate different things.

I laugh all the time in class. I had no idea I was having such a good time, but apparently everything is exciting to me when I teach. I can't decide if that's good or bad, but no one has said anything about it, usually just that my class feels "comfortable" or "inviting" or "friendly" or something like that, so I don't think I'll change. That's just my personality.

I liked my questions. I used a lot of comparison questions, and explain why, and "can you have a different answer for this question and still be correct" ... That was good. And I didn't let my students off the hook if they couldn't answer my question. I would just break the question down into the steps needed to answer the original, big question.

I thought it was kind of boring when I taught the lesson, mainly because I had to do definitions, but when I watched the video I actually liked it. There was enough activity to break up the definitions so that it didn't seem to drag. For example, they did a definition, said it in their own words, and drew pictures to illustrate the definition.

Overall, I thought it was my best lesson yet, and I liked seeing it from the students' view.