One of the things that impresses me most about my mentor teacher is his ability to guide classroom activities and discussions and integrate these into his lessons.

I am reminded of one lesson in particular that occurred about halfway through the semester. It was a Science class, and my mentor wanted to teach the students about the procedure instructions in the Scientific Method. First, he gave the students 10 minutes to write down the steps they would need to take for tying their shoelaces. After 10 minutes, he got the students to try it with a partner by reading the steps they came up with aloud while their partner did the actions without making inferences or assumptions about what the instructions are saying, but following them exactly the way they are stated. Then my mentor teacher got some confident volunteers to read aloud their instructions while the teacher demonstrated how to obey these instructions. His attempt to tie his shoelaces according to instructions failed, clearly, as he did not make any inferences. The main message my mentor teacher tried to convey through this lesson was that procedure instructions in Science need to be clear, detailed, and written as though the readers have no prior knowledge at all.

When reflecting on how the learning was facilitated in this lesson, I noted that:

• There was a time of silent work as the students followed a task on their own (i.e. coming up with their own list of instructions). The teacher made sure to enforce “quiz conditions,” so no talking or communication between students was permitted at this time.
• There was a time of pair-sharing and practicing the effectiveness of the procedures on a partner. In this time, students needed to find a partner that they had never worked with before that semester.
• There was a time of whole-class discussion, where the teacher led the overall discussion and demonstrated from the front. He called on confident students to share their instructions with the class, because he knew that he would need to point out that they were slightly incomplete instructions.

In this way, my mentor teacher guided both independent and collaborative learning tasks as well as a skillfully-facilitated classroom discussion. Students were actively engaged, curious, and participating in the full lesson. Based on student responses, my mentor teacher needed to respond accordingly in flexible ways that continued to ignite students’ thinking and curiosity towards Scientific procedure and critical thinking.

Overall, this learning experienced showed me that “thinking outside the box” is vital for facilitating the best learning, and the class discussion that follows the practice is of fundamental importance to solidifying learning targets and truly capturing the essence of the lesson.

How have you seen your mentor teacher approach class discussions? Do they have any specific techniques they use?

Photo by Peter Hershey on Unsplash