Think of a particular instance from section (a class discussion, group work on a worksheet, mini-lecture, etc.).

• What was your goal for this part of the class?
• What was your plan to accomplish this goal?
• What were the students reactions? How did they compare to your expectations?
• How did you assess whether your goal was achieved?
• What did you do well?
• What could you have done differently?

Here is a thorough example:

I prepared a mini-lecture on the Doppler effect that was supposed to be 10 minutes. I planned to draw several figures on the board that involved an exoplanet orbiting a star. I polled the class for when I would observe a redshift and when I would observe a blueshift. I was hoping to emphasize (1) that we observe the star and not the planet, (2) the magnitude of these Doppler shifts, and (3) how the Doppler shift translates to the existence of an exoplanet around the star.

Students were quiet when I asked questions. Students were resistant to answer and mumbled in their groups. I tried cold calling on a group to answer my question “When do we see a blueshift?”, and the group just stared at me. One of the group members eventually answered correctly after a couple seconds of silence, but it was unclear whether the rest of the group (or the class) understood the concept. I noticed I was short on time at this point and decided to move on.

I had expected to cover more questions in the given time, but the lack of student participation hindered progress. I gave a worksheet after this mini-lecture that talked about what we had just covered. Mingling with the groups, I saw most of the groups were correctly answering the questions. However, it is unclear what part the mini-lecture played in their understanding of the Doppler shift.

I feel I did a good job on asking specific questions even though students did not answer until they were probed. I felt the worksheet was well designed and adequately assessed whether they understood the material. I would have liked to have more student participation but I am not sure how to get students to want to speak up in class. Perhaps I could have used something like Think-Pair-Share during the mini-lecture to give them time to assess their understanding.