Working on a Presentation in a Team and Developing Personal Skills Necessary When for a Job Application

What worked well during the planning process for our presentation, was communication, content knowledge, and our focus goal for what each students should know about the process of photosynthesis. Before the group started to work on the final presentation, we were sitting down and discussing a genuine lesson plan that can provide some rigorous content and stimulate students thinking. I like how each one of us brought our own knowledge to the lesson specifically because we all teach different grade levels. When we were discussing the lesson to one another, we noticed how everything that we cover throughout our grade levels all falls hand in hand. On the other hand, what didn’t work as well as we visualize was we didn’t have a good transition time during our presentation. As a group we had our own focus point that didn’t transition smoothly, this allow us to work solo rather than a group.

Due to the fact that we couldn’t meet up to conduct a run through practice, we ended up waiting around for our partner to finish his or her presentation and not fully being invested into each other presentation. I can fully understand when a student doesn’t understand the following lesson, our presentation ended up causing some confusing. There was a student during the class, who ask a question at the end of our lesson to gain a better understand of our photosynthesis lesson. She asked, was our lesson more focus on energy base or photosynthesis? I can see how that might look when three teachers are teaching from a different perspective, which can cause some misconception in the classroom. We know that we didn’t start off with the discussion of photosynthesis however our approach was to provide a sum up from each level within our field.

Within the material phase everything went pretty smoothly, everything that we wanted the student to know, they were able to deliver valuable information back to me. I’m not sure if anything didn’t work within our favor, I felt we did a pretty good job with delivering the materials. As I stated earlier in the beginning paragraph, overall I think we presented a realistic presentation. By all means I’m not saying that my group didn’t do a decent job of presenting our lesson.

I’m reflecting on how students tends to miss the big picture of the lesson because we didn’t break down the lesson first before we started the lesson. Here’s an example to consider, not one time we really discuss what our lesson was going to be about nor did we took into consideration our audience (students). The overall implementation was put together very well however the execution could’ve been tighter while presenting the lesson with a group and not as an individual. When a group is presenting, I truly believe that we must be on the same page to have a smooth transition

If I were to do this project again, I would probably have done something more hands-on with my group members. I chose to present photosynthesis because we focus our lesson around this subject. I knew that I would not have too much trouble implementing this lesson however I nerve thought about how we would look as a group implementation. For this project I also should have really thought my instruction set out more. As I mentioned before I chose to implement this lesson because it was realistic and it’s about the right time to teach our students about the process of photosynthesis.

I should have seen this well before I started, implementing by thinking harder about all of the possibilities that the teaching set had untaken a twist that I didn’t see at first. More investigation could have been done in this group presentation so that one person isn’t doing all the talking throughout the lesson. The last thing that I would have done differently would be to have started this project with asking myself what type of students I have in my class. What do I want the students to know about the subject of photosynthesis? And what do I want each student to walk away with?

My overall learning experience from this group presentation was that it’s important to know your group members style of teaching and what works for them in regards to teaching. A group that works well together can achieve much more than individuals working on their own. Also another experience to take into consideration are skills development. Some of these skills will be useful throughout our careers in education and all are valued by employers. The experience will truly help you know more about yourself. Collaborating with others will help identify strengths and weaknesses (for example, you may be a better leader than listener, or you might be good at coming up with the ‘big ideas’ but not so good at putting them into action). Enhanced self-awareness will both help your approach to learning and will be vital when you come to write your curriculum vita (CV) or complete job application forms.