We where tasked to reflect on the simulations we did in the tutorials for Student Teacher Interaction in the Classroom (STiC), the instructions for the task are available here. We did three simulations, with increasing amount of misbehavior. The first simulation was mostly focused on presentation — body language, speech mannerisms, praise, using students names, and whiteboard work. The second simulation introduced some misbehaving students to see how we could cope with misbehavior. Each `student’ drew a slip of paper telling them how to behave prior to the session. The third simulation introduced even more misbehavior.

I’ve uploaded videos of the three simulations to YouTube, see the links below:

Reflection on Simulation 1

One of the first things I noticed when watching myself on video is that I bounce. Every time I move onto the next concept or get excited about an idea I do a little mini bounce where I suppose I must be going up onto my toes momentarily. I’m not sure if it’s a problem, as it does communicate my excitement (via body language) but it could also be distracting or annoying, so maybe I should try and find other ways of expressing my excitement. I did reduce it in the second and third simulations, although I think that was partly due to being distracted by the misbehavior. Regardless its something to keep an eye on, and if I notice it is distracting students I’ll work on finding other ways to express my excitement.

My whiteboard work and delivery was ok I think, although I did occasionally speak while my back was turned to the class, particularly towards the beginning of the class (0:20, 0:45, 1:20, 6:00, 7:20), which might have made me difficult to hear during those moments. The majority of the time I was facing the class and my direct instruction was ok I think. I also spent a fair amount of preparation time planing the class and that certainly contributed. The lesson fit to time and I made sure to review required knowledge to begin with, so that aspect was good too.

I almost didn’t use names at all, even though I intended too going into the class. I think this is partially because I forgot, and partially because I wasn’t confident that I knew peoples names to begin with (this was early in the term). Use of names is definitely a point I want to improve on, not only in the following simulations, but beyond that as well.

I went from abstract concepts to concrete (even though this simulation was actually before that concept was introduced in the lectures), but reflecting back on it I could try and find ways to go the other way in future, particularly for this lesson where I had some nice concrete representations — I could find a way to start with that.

I used praise a couple of times (5:00, 5:40, 9:55), but I think I could have taken some time to give out more praise, and that is another point I want to work on improving moving forward. Otherwise I was fairly happy with my use of language, using what I felt like was an appropriate combination of open and closed questions.

Reflection on Simulation 2

In the second simulation… I was focusing on improving the things i noticed from the first simulation, but I think it turned out it was all just abit irrelevant — the misbehavior changed everything, totally changing what I needed to focus on. I wasn’t expecting the degree to which the misbehavior would just… change everything, and as it caught me off balance I struggled to maintain my cool to be honest.

It started out well though. Right out the door I started using names more than I did in the first simulation, starting with my introduction to the lesson which involved having a student volunteer their name to be used in the lesson — I lured Mark into this role at 0:30 of the video. Using names more was one of the things I wanted to focus on from my reflection on the first simulation, and I think and it helped — the introduction went fairly well, but after that everything started spiraling out of control.

When the misbehavior started it really caught me off balance, and I struggled to keep the momentum going. I hadn’t prepared my lesson quite as thoroughly as I had in simulation 1, and I think that made my uncertainty with dealing with the misbehavior worse — I started forgetting things as I got flustered. For example, I forgot to review the required knowledge to begin with (which I had intended to do), and towards the end of the lesson I even started making mistakes, saying “suffix” when I meant “prefix” (8:10), and then teaching incorrect material (having gotten the suffixes and prefixes mixed up). I realised my mess up a few minutes after the lesson was over, but it would have complicated the next lesson in the topic.

My whiteboard work and delivery was ok, but how distracted and flustered I was feeling started showing through, for example at 6:30 I set a task and then went on answering questions about it, rubbing it out and getting distracted down a tangent line of explanation (7:50) in reaction to a question. Not a bad thing in and of itself, but I never actually found my way back to the original question at all, abandoning it without realising because it just slipped my mind.

If I had prepared the lesson a little more thoroughly I think it would have run substantially more smoothly. The other thing I realised from reflecting on the second simulation is that in order to manage the behavior, I needed to minimise the amount of time I spent giving direct instruction from the front of the class, and so I resolved to design a lesson for the third simulation with a minimum of direct instruction.

Reflection on Simulation 3

After the train-wreck that was my second simulation, I prepared much better for the third simulation, designing a worksheet that I could hand out that included explanations of the material allowing me to minimise the amount of direct instruction I needed to give, and freeing me up to spend more of my time and attention managing behavior. This helped ALOT, even more than I had expected it too. Having all my time spent focusing on answering questions, facing the class I barely turned my back on the class for the entire lesson) and moving around using proximity to control behavior was surprisingly effective. The lesson even ended with Alain saying “But I want to learn more” at 10:30 right after Stephen announced that 10min was up. Good way to end! But still plenty to improve on.

Again right out the bat I was using names, calling Nick out by time straight away on his misbehavior (1:30). I was happy with how I handled Nick’s misbehavior throughout this simulation, calling him out by name again at 2:45, and offering to negotiate with him at 3:20. Later at 6:50 Nick asked me another off-task question and I managed to link my answer back to the material in a way that got him engaged in a conversation about the content by linking the content to his (apparent) interests. Because of the design and preparation of the lesson I managed to spend almost all of my time in close proximity to the students, spending a good amount of my time directly adjacent the misbehaving students even if I was talking too and answering questions from the other students. This use of proximity seemed to have a dramatic effect in comparison to the second simulation in which I only really used proximity once and most of my time was instead spent giving direct instruction.

Conclusions and overall trends

One of the most noticeable trends for me was my use of names improved across the three simulations. This was probably a combination of me getting more familiar with peoples names, and me deliberately trying to use names more. Simulation 1 (with no misbehavior) was so different to the other two (with misbehavior) that its hard to even compare. I was surprised by how big the effect of misbehavior is, but also at how effective simple things like preparing a lesson a certain way can have. Lessons I took from it, and want to continue working on improving on include:

Learning and using names
Using more praise
Being more aware of my use of language
Making sure to put in the work to prepare lessons, including reviewing required/ assumed knowledge.
Be more aware of my use of concrete ideas vs. abstract ideas and try to find more ways to introduce concepts in a concrete way prior to moving the concept into the abstract

These things seem simple, almost straightforward, but these simulations helped me realise that the impact they can have is much more dramatic than the subtle effect I imagined they would have. Although fundamental, these things are very important to focus on.