Lesson 8- Teaching Demo

 Preparation & presentation

    It was our teaching demonstration, which was part of our assignment. Preparing this teaching demonstration was a fascinating and time-consuming experience for me and my group. From A to Z, we went through various stages of preparation. We had a conversation about the topic we should give during the teaching demo before the demo. We went over all of Dr. Lina's presentations together, thinking and discussing topics that can benefit education students.  Finally, we decided on a topic: German Expressionism, which several of us learnt about in last semester's Producing TV and Film module. We chose to teach this topic since it is related to one of Dr. Lina's classes on editing and filmmaking in teaching. Furthermore, German Expressionism is historically relevant. When it came to history, most of our group members said that they learned history in a traditional and boring way in school. As a result, we would like to present an alternate method and inspire educators to teach history more entertainingly. We would also like to emphasise the significance of imagination and digital literacy among us, particularly among students. 

    We divided the work equally after agreeing on a topic. We conducted Internet research, read articles, and even looked for videos about German Expressionism. To make our presentation critical and holistic, we also delved further into the context and history of the German Expressionism movement. After that, we jointly designed the short lesson flow and established our learning objectives using Bloom's Taxonomy and the ABCD approach. Following our preparation, we developed our slides and amended them with certain SIOP characteristics we learned in Dr Lina's class. In our presentation, we attempted to distribute some of the elements such as assessment and learning methodologies. We structured the presentation on cognitive learning theory, beginning with an introduction and linking previous knowledge, followed by a presentation, activity, conclusion, and assessment. Following our satisfaction check, we had a rehearsal with Dr Lina. During the rehearsal, we learned how to improve our performance and presenting skills by reorganising our slides into graphics and being more confident in presenting.

    During the actual day, I was satisfied with our performance and we were the best. We successfully caught their attention and taught them precisely. All of us put in our best efforts! However, I loved Wyaihon's group presentation about the solar system. I enjoyed the group activities they planned and they were really interactive. I learned a new way to make my teaching more engaging. Furthermore, I learned how Luanne's group organised all their points neatly in the slides. I learned that formatting is crucial for students' comprehension. 

Feelings & Experience

    I was nervous and excited at the same time. I was worried that we wouldn't be able to do it adequately in time. I practised in privacy on my seat several times. I also had a secret conversation with myself to motivate myself. We also encouraged one another. This teaching demonstration reminded me of last year's education showcase. We also need to plan a microteaching session for primary school children. However, we are planning a tertiary-level class at the moment. I found it a little difficult because I am also a tertiary student. Fortunately, I succeeded and had a good time overcoming the obstacles. I learned more from this teaching demo such as how to wrap up everything nicely in a summary compared to previous experience.

Strategies and theories in our teaching demo

    First, a pre-lesson using game-based learning (quiz game) is presented. Playing, according to Piaget's cognitive development theory, immediately engages pupils' schemes, allowing them to transcend their current reality and boost their situational interest (Rotgans & Schmidt, 2011). For example, using the cognitive information processing model, students can organise information representations in working memory during the game, integrate them with one another, and then link them to previously learned information from their long-term memories (Mayer, 2014) before learning new information (Joshi, 2006). Game-based learning also motivates students by giving them experiences that they want to repeat (Zusho et al., 2014). 

    Secondly, the presentation. Comprehension is important in cognitive growth based on Bloom's taxonomy. As a result, presentations are important. Based on Vygotsky's social cognitive theory, our teaching emphasises the whole class interaction, such as questioning and sharing during teacher presentations, which promotes students' knowledge construction (Wang&Wang, 2013, p.1387) and improves students' memory to increase students' understanding and capacity to integrate and synthesise content (Nasmith&Steinert, 2001). The use of exemplar theory in concept learning is also used to encourage students to build an understanding of the concept topics by thinking on logical examples because comprehension requires more cognitive processing than simply memorising (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001). Furthermore, the usage of the example videos in our slides helps students start integrating knowledge into the cognitive systems they already have in place to make sense of the world, according to cognitive learning theory. Carless & Chan (2017) stated that some of the knowledge and assessment are difficult to transfer verbally or in writing, but is best illustrated through the use of exemplars. Moreover, adding the videos sparks students' curiosity about learning and helps them draw connections between what they have learned, which, according to Kaucak & Eggen (2012), stimulates students' attention and imagination and cultivates their interest to help them become more engaged in the material (Velandia, 2008, p. 11). 

    Thirdly, Patrick demonstrates how to create several angle shots. Teachers delivering demonstrations, according to Grimm et al. (2014), can be used to improve teachers' classroom practice and students' performance. According to Randler and Hulde (2007), teachers' demonstrations scaffold students' cognitive achievements and provide them with a deeper knowledge of how the topic works. It also keeps students on track by providing them with accurate and up-to-date information before their application (Ana & Savec, 2011), which can save both students and teachers time. 

 

    Moving on, the film analysis task and the after-class assessment. According to Bloom's Taxonomy, students' application and critical thinking are important. Numrich's critical thinking steps include observing, identifying, comprehending, translating, evaluating, and problem-solving (Numrich, 2009). We utilised a film as our main text. We followed Numrich's sequence, which required students to watch and note down the German Expressionism film features from the video, and this needed students to have a rudimentary comprehension of the individual features. Then, while watching the film, students were involved in the interpretation of the narrative before analysing it. Finally, scene creation was linked to problem solutions. Based on concept learning theory, the sharing session following the video analysis also allows teachers to assess the degree of their students' knowledge based on their sharing before scaffolding them. This session was also relevant to the thinking tool: metacognition (Guo, 2022).

  Finally, there are the visuals and rewards. The images used in this teaching demonstration serve two functions. For starters, because students' attention tends to shift from a single stimulus to a different one, images are believed to draw and hold their attention (Zhou et al., 2007). Students are more refreshed and concentrated in class when they see diverse photos. Second, as supported by the dual-coding hypothesis (Moşteanu, 2021), using images in lecturing improves students' sensory memory and helps students encode schemas through visualisation before leveraging on the information in long-term memory (Clark & Valivio, 1991). The rewards were based on Skinner's operant conditioning theory. Snacks serve as an instant positive reinforcer, improving students' engagement by amplifying the impact of reinforcers (Melanko & Larkin, 2013).

Improvements

    After watching our presentation video, we can make some changes for the next presentation. The first consideration is time management. Next time, I believe we should practise more and schedule ourselves effectively before the presentation to guarantee we can deliver all of our points within the time limit. The second factor is the tone of our presentation. I believe we should work on our tone more so that we can present with more emotions to create engagement. 

Reconstruction

    The utilisation of technology to facilitate my class is the most motivating aspect of this teaching demo for me as a preservice teacher. I would like to use more technology, images, films, and Numrich's sequence to scaffold my students' cognition and metacognition, especially in tough subjects. Despite the difficulty of the subject matter, I hope to pique their enthusiasm for learning. In the future, I aspire to find more fascinating and unique ways to teach and aid my students' learning.

References:

Ana, L., & Savec, F. V. (2011). Students hands-on experimental work vs lecture demonstration in teaching elementary school chemistry. Acta chimica Slovenica, 58, 866-75. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/256983680_Students%27_Hands-on_Experimental_Work_vs_Lecture_Demonstration_in_Teaching_Elementary_School_Chemistry

Carless, D., & Chan, K. K. H. (2017). "Managing dialogic use of exemplars." Assessment & evaluation in higher education, 42(6), 930-941.https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2016.1211246

Eggen, & Kauchak, D. (2015). Educational Psychology. Pearson Education, Limited.

Joshi, M. (2006). Diversity in lecture delivery. Journal of NELTA, 11(1-2), 1-151.

Lina Guo (2022) Teachers’ mediation in students’ development of cognition and metacognition, Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 50:5, 458-473. https://doi.org/10.1080/1359866X.2020.1846158 

Mayer, R. E., & Estrella, G. (2014). Benefits of emotional design in multimedia instruction. Learning and Instruction, 33, 12-18. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.learninstruc.2014.02.004

Mosteanu, N. R. (2021). Teaching and learning techniques for the online environment: How to maintain students' attention and achieve learning outcomes in a virtual environment using new technology. International journal of innovative research and sciences studies, 4(4). https://doi.org/10.53894/ijirss.v4i4.298

Nasmith, L., & Steinert, Y. (2001). The evaluation of a workshop to promote interactive lecturing. Teaching and learning in medicine, 13(1), 43-48. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15328015tlm1301_8

Numrich, C. (2009). Raise the issue: an integrated approach to critical thinking (3rd e.d). Pearson.

Randler, C., & Hulde, M. Hands-on versus teacher-centred experiments in soil ecology. Research in Science & Technological Education 2007, 25,329–338.http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02635140701535091

Rotgans, J. I. & Schmidt, H. G. (2011). Cognitive engagement in the problem-based learning classroom. Adv in Health Sci Educ, 16, 465-479. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10459-011-9272-9

Velandia, R. (2008). The role of warming up activities in adolescent students’ involvement during the English class. Profile Journal, 10, 9-26.

Wang, K., & Wang, X. (2013). Promoting knowledge construction and cognitive development: A case study of teacher’s questioning. Theory and Practice in Language Studies, 3, 1387-1393.

Zusho, A., Anthony, J. S., Hashimoto, N., & Robertson, G. (2014). Do video games provide motivation to learn? In F. C. Blumberg (Ed.), Learning by playing: Video gaming in education, 69-86. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.