You Don't Know Where Your Interest Lies: Interest Approach Lab Relfection

Depending on the school students have between 4-8 class periods a day. A common struggle as an educator is how do we take students from the history or math class they might have just been sitting in for 45-80 minutes and engage them in our class? 

This week I got to demonstrate interest approaches in lab. This quick activity I did was a way to get students thinking about animal science and specifically on animal welfare. 

My interest approach was having students rotate to different stations and at that station students had to write down what animal made that product (adhesive, felt, leather and rubber) and how you can make it without an animal. 

When looking back on my lesson there were many thing I could have done better:

1.  Having the instructions on the board so everyone was clear on them.

2. Allowing more wait time when asking questions and rotating between students for answers to my questions.

3. Saying my objectives clearer when starting the lesson. Putting them in simple terms and not necessarily what was on my lesson plan. 

With the bad comes some good: 

1. I added music to the lesson while they were rotating around to the stations. 

2. Throughout the process (and the rest of the lesson) I never gave my opinion on animal welfare. I was letting them formulate their own opinion with good sources. 

3. I have them real life objects to look at and recreate instead of pictures of items. 

I am looking forwards to the next lab to try and correct some of my "opps" and be a better educator.