Reflections on Small Group Presentations

I liked Monday’s class where we did small group presentations. I was in the “Inquiry” group, and I think being held accountable for having to teach the article to the class helped me in my reading. It forced me to think about what I found important in the article, and not just skim over it without really thinking about it. I like how we only had a short time to put our presentations together. Practice in putting presentations together quickly is one of the valuable experiences I think we can have as future teachers. I know in the future, I will be forced to put presentations together quickly, yet I do not have much experience with this. So, I really enjoyed our experience in class last week because it showed me that I/we can be creative, and teach a valuable lesson in a short amount of time. I think that it worked well having half the class read one article, and the other half of the class read another article. Truthfully, I did not read the Duckworth chapters as closely as I read the Inquiry article, and I think that this had some benefits and some negative aspects. What I found helpful about not reading the Duckworth article as closely is that I probably learned more about the article than I did about the Inquiry article (obviously because I did not read it as closely.) I was more engaged about learning the material in Duckworth than I was when the other Inquiry group presented. When the other Inquiry group presented, I was more interested in examining how they approached teaching the article. It was very interesting to see how a group who read the same article, and had the same amount of time to come up with how to present it, presented in such a different way. What I learned from all of the groups was the importance of keeping an audience engaged through activity.

I think the main reason you gave us this assignment was to show us that even in a small amount of time, it is possible to come up with some very engaging presentations. This is something we will be doing probably on a daily basis in our future careers, so it is important for us to get some practice doing this! Also, I think you did this to almost put us in “your shoes,” or in the shoes of a teacher. We were able to see how important it is to understand what we will be teaching in the future. It showed us that we must be prepared for what we are going to be teaching our students. It was interesting presenting because you could tell as a presenter who did and did not read the articles in the “audience.” I think this is where the importance of engaging activities comes in, because they can get students interested in the material.