Self Assessment: Microteaching – Hear a Knot See a Knot

Self Assessment: Microteaching – Hear a Knot See a Knot
I thought these things went well in my lesson:
Group size being small meant that things went quickly especially with the quick learners. Two of my three students were able to follow on the first instructions while one student needed several tries. This confirms an old statistic that your audience only hears 45% of audio the first time (this statistic needs to be confirmed and find research quote to back it up), meaning that it is normal to have to repeat the same instructions again.
Audio only gave some difficulty as expected, with the visual doing much better.
Everyone completed the task successfully!

If I were to teach the lesson again, I would work to improve it in these ways.
1. A better motivational introduction as to why we might need to learn to tie a knot. Such a story might be introduced with the question: Have you ever needed to tie a package and the string was too short? We will learn how to lengthen your string or rope so that it will hold together. The Short String Problem whereby the solution is to tie two or more strings together and test that they hold.
2. A better pre-test question to ensure that the group understands the difference between their right and left hands as without this knowledge it will be difficult to complete the knot correctly.
3. More clearly explain that we will be doing this exercise three times so that the student can evaluate how they best learn; auditory only, visual only (MIME), or both audio and visual.
4. Have a plan be to tie additional knot(s) for those who are very fast.
5. Make sure that each person pulls a hand width of string out when they grasp the ends to overlay on each other.

Here are some things that I reflected on based on my peer’s feedback:
1. Felt pressured from auditory only instructions. Improvement 1, 2, and 5.
2. More clearly explain the motivation for learning to do this task. Improvement 3.
3. I noticed that a hand width of string from the ends of the string made it easier and so this will be added to the instructions.
4. Have a Plan B, in this case additional knots that could be tied from written directions, to keep the fast learners busy.
5. Come up with a suitable test for the four methods written, auditory, visual, and combination of all of them.
There should be a combination to accommodate all learning styles.