Blog Prompt #7 – Project 3 Reflection
We started as a big group of eight people and brainstormed ideas together on a big sheet of paper. We had no trouble coming up with ideas and subtopics for our ideas so after that split up into groups to cover the wide range of topics that we had. Brainstorming ideas together with the group helped us bond and this made our presentation topics more interesting.
In a way we hoped that we would not just be older students talking to younger students but also people that they could relate to. More importantly, we hoped that the information we were giving them through the presentation would be something of use. We were passing on our knowledge that we wished we had known and just by the fact that we were helping younger students it became a really enjoyable experience for us.
Not only was it an enjoyable experience for us, but I felt it was also like that for the grade nines. They walked away from the seminar smiling and when we asked them whether it was useful, they said, "yes". This seminar taught me that teaching through personal experiences are more useful than teaching through hard facts. It also taught me that education and teaching should be a fun experience rather than an obsession with incurring information.
For the most part, our seminar went as expected because of the practice run-through we did with our grade twelve class. The run-through helped us a lot since our classmates gave us a lot of really useful constructive criticism. What was not anticipated was the difference in our timing for finishing our talk with each of the grade nine groups. Some groups finished earlier, some later and the ones that were finished earlier had to wait for the ones that were not finished. This created a bit of a problem but that was made up by answering questions that the grade nines posed. Overall, the presentation was good and so were our performances with the grade nines. The only thing that I would have changed if we were to do it all over again is to add more subtopics and potential questions to ask the grade nines. This way, if one group finishes faster than another, there will not be a pause or a need to rotate earlier.
