An SLP in a Teacher's World

"Your assignment is to teach a 20 minute lesson."

Those were my feeling after hearing about our Guided Learning 1.0 assignment. First, I have to admit I was not excited about the assignment, to say the least. I want to be a speech pathologist, why in the world would I need to know how to teach? Add to that the fact that teaching my very own lesson was kind of intimidating, and you can get the feeling that my motivation to do this assignment was very low.
For me, the hardest part of developing the lesson was actually choosing what to teach about. Once I chose my topic, the flow of the lesson came much easier. It is a topic I knew well and thought was important to teach, so that made the lecture part of the lesson go pretty smoothly.

Overall, I think my quiz on socrative.com was the most effective element of my lesson. I think it helped put what I was lecturing about into a real-life perspective for the learners, and it also gave me a really good idea of whether the learners actually understood what I was talking about and could apply the information. While I thought my technology was the more effective part of my lesson, for another group member I thought their ability to lecture was most effective. This group member had great explanations of a pretty complicated topic that I found I was able to (mostly) follow, despite having little to no geology background.
In the future when preparing, I would try to have less fear at the beginning of the planning process. My avoidance of the assignment paralyzed me and prevented me from having adequate time to practice actually giving the lesson. It would have been better to start a bit earlier so I didn't feel so crunched for time at the end. My fear of this project was mostly unfounded, so I feel like now I have more confidence to get started in the future.
I found the overall layout and structure of my lesson to be pretty effective. I also felt like my small bit of technology worked really well. For GLE 2.0, I do not plan on changing any of the major structures of the lesson. There are some smaller elements that I want to try to improve. I think the wording on my PowerPoint could be better, because as I was talking I realized ways I could simplify how I word things. I also want to work on engaging the learners even more. I might come up with a couple more questions to ask during the lecture and make sure I check if they are understanding things. Now that I know the structure of the lesson is solid, I can really concentrate on how I'm speaking and making sure the learners are very engaged.

Basically, after completing this assignment, I'm ready to go out and be a teacher.

Not really, but I do feel more confident in my ability to teach a lesson. And even if that is not exactly what I'll be doing in the future, it is a skill that is good to have, especially if I will be working in a school setting (SLPs co-teaching lessons is becoming more and more popular!)
Stay tuned for how GLE 2.0 goes...

It's Like Going to Class, But I'm in My Bed...

Last week, we did not meet for class. Instead, we had a couple of online discussion boards that we needed to post on before class time was up. I thought this was a good alternative to canceling class altogether since our instructor couldn't be there. It would be a shame to lose out on an entire class period, since we only meet once a week. Posting on the discussions boards caused us to still interact a bit with our classmates while learning new material. And it allowed me to do this without having to leave the comfort of my bed...
The article and video that we viewed were about the concept of universal design for learning (UDL). I think this is a great idea that I want to explore more. It is all about planning learning to make it accessible for ALL students. The article talked about the importance of speech pathologists in this process, so it's definitely something I might encounter in my future career.

March Course Journal

If you haven't heard me talk enough about Maker March, here is a video of me discussing my favorite activity of the month!

As an additional update, last week in class we presented our maker projects. I thought our presentation went really well, and I was proud of my group for coming together and cohesively sharing our idea. Public speaking and class presentations are one of my least favorite things, but it definitely helps to have a group of people up there with you. Now we just need to invent the technology to make the kind of virtual reality world we talked about possible...... but don't hold your breath.