On March 28, I had an opportunity to do my first large class-teaching with over 200 students. My class was one of the three sections offered by BIOL201. Since my teaching has to align with the two other sections of this course, it was important to ensure I had delivered all the content needed. Originally, my practicum was scheduled to be two 50-minute classes, but since the progress of class had changed during the term, I had to deliver all my lecture material in a 90-minute class period. It was important for me to reflect on my teaching during class based on students’ reaction, and make changes accordingly.

Overall, I was able to capture my students’ attention throughout the class with the help of a few techniques/tools I used. I used the cam doc as a white board to write as I was teaching about the different steps of the Ticarboxylic Acid cycle, rather than displaying everything on the Powerpoint slides at once. I was able to breakdown the materials better for students to follow. I also designed some iclicker questions for students to answer alone the class to test their understanding. I always shared the respond with class right after and addressed any common misconceptions in order to give students chances to reflect their learning timely. During class, there was a little accident – a student asked me a question which I was not entirely sure about the answer. Understanding the importance of being accurate in answering, I turned to my mentor, Dr Chowrira, for suggestion. Though feeling a little embarrassed, my mentor told me that it was done very naturally and was definitely the right thing to do. According to my mentor, I also did well in pacing and setting up a friendly environment. Furthermore, I repeated the questions students had asked, which was a good practice that I should keep doing in a large classroom like that.

As for something that I could improve on, my mentor pointed out that I occasionally “formulated things”. Rather than asking students to “see the pattern” of how reactions work, I should have tackled from the point of “why” certain things happened. This is to encourage students to understand the reasoning rather than memorizing contents, which is an important concept in teaching in general. Furthermore, I should have spent more time wrapping up the class. Not all activities could be run all the time within class. It is more important to provide a summary at the end of class, rather than trying to squeeze all contents and activities at the end. This was a mistake I made in my previous practicum, and will definitely be something that I need to pay more attention on in the future.

Despite a few things that I should work on, the class was generally smooth, and I gained great experience in teaching a large class.