Self Assessment on Microteaching: How to Juggle in 10 Minutes or Less

My first teaching assignment for MAED 314A was a fun one that was well received by my group of five.
My BOOPPPS style lesson plan (see previous blog) was followed closely and I managed to fit the lesson nicely into the ten minute time frame. I was happy to find that no one had previous juggling experience. This would have made for a slight complication, but one that I would have had a plan for. I was also happy to see that each of my four students (Amelia, Mina, Nathan and Sam) was, or at least pretended to be, keenly interested in the activity. In the beginning – using one ball and then two - it was rewarding to see each of the students making progress with the skills. I did my best to give good feedback as this occurred and made suggestions where needed.
I received great feedback from my “class” which included, “great demo”, “great step by step instruction”, good “starting easy to progressive to hard” and “good use of descriptive terms”. These were very nice to hear and made it feel like my teaching session was a success.
The constructive feedback I received was unanimously to use something other than tennis balls for this lesson as they were too bouncy. I agree completely with this recommendation and would try to use bean bags or something similar to avoid the balls bouncing away from those learning the skill. I was also able to pick up some ideas for how I would instruct in the future that I hadn’t thought of when I planned the lesson. Amelia noticed midway into the lesson that when jugging three balls, the beginning hand had to contain the two balls and not just one. This would be highlighted in a future session.
Overall, this microteaching assignment was a success and was seen as rewarding and confidence building to myself and to those I was trying to teach. I can only hope that I teach classes in the future that are as interested and well behaved.