Problem Solving Approach Reflection

 Our next teaching lab was focused on using the Problem Solving Approach in class. This meant that we needed to create a Managerial type Lesson Plan, and then use it to teach for up to 20 minutes in class. I decided to continue with a lesson in my Pork Butchering Unit, as this is the one where I had the best handle on. I taught with Lesson 12 of 15 in my Unit, and this lesson was titled "What are different ways to serve pork". In this lesson, I allowed students to explore a Pig Cut order sheet that is used in industry. I wanted to be able to connect this pork lesson, to their lives outside of class. I used this image to base my lesson off of. 

My Bell work for this lesson is allowing students to think about the last time that they ate pork. I want to allow them to start thinking about how often they eat pork and at which meals. Once they take this into consideration, we can then look at how to get that pork from their freezer to their plate. I used my interest approach to allow students to take a look at the Pork Cut Sheet, that I found from a pork butcher. I gave them a few minutes and allowed them to take note of some observations that they had. I also wanted to see if any of the students have seen or used this before. After we took a look at this paper, I led them into the Problem for the day, which was "What are different ways to serve Pork." I used the Possibilites factor problem to allow students to brainstorm ways that they could serve pork in their homes. 

I broke students up into 3 groups, using different colored Pipe Cleaners. Once they were assigned to a group, I then assigned then a wholesale cut of pork. Students were then tasked with finding 2 recipes that used cuts of pork from their assigned wholesale. I wanted students to understand that different cuts of pork can produce different meals and can therefore be prepped different ways. 

Going into this lesson, I knew that I was going to have adapt it a lot to fit into a 20 minute time span. In the classroom, I am expecting this particular assignment to last 3 days, with students creating a small powerpoint to share with the class the recipes that they found. I am planning on giving students 2 days to work on it and then 1 day to share their recipes that they found. For the lesson I taught in class, only a small portion of this assignment was actually shown.

So after reflecting on this lesson, I felt really good about it. As noted from some of my peers, there are some small things to work on, but overall I felt very comfortable in the classroom teaching this lesson. 

Somethings that my peers felt went well:

- Use of Processing questions

- Using a real life example

- Grouping techniques

- Tone of Voice

- Questions provided on the slide

Somethings that my peers felt that could use more work: 

- Breaking up and chunking the directions

- Not telling students what the groups are for before picking the pipe cleaner

- More intentional walking around the room

- Blocking students view from the board

- My "tic" word being "so"

Overall Reflection 

I feel like this wasn't my best teaching performance, but I also feel like cramming a lesson that would typically take longer, was part of the issue. I think some of the things that I said, would have been different had we gone through the bell work and wrap-up. There were a few things that my peers suggested, that I already have in the lesson plan, but did not demonstrate because I was focusing on demonstrating the problem solving strategy. 

I think that my overall teaching style is improving with things such as tone and student movement. Some things that I would like to continue to work on, are asking better reflecting questions, as well as giving directions so that students understand them. I tried to write them out on the board, but feel I could have been more detailed with that. If students can see it on the board, they will be able to complete the task better. My Tic word, I feel like I use as a transition to lean on. I am hoping with more practice, this will work itself out. 

I am looking forward to our micro-teaching unit ahead, as we really get the feel of a classroom and teaching a full lesson! So Stay tuned to see how that goes!

~Paige