Today I observed my cooperating teacher give a lecture followed by a quiz, which was then followed by a group project. The lecture was good. It was the first concerning the unit on market structures. This lesson was about perfect competition; my second video teach wednesday next will extend upon the analysis and discuss the basic components of the monopolistic competion and oligopoly models.
I noticed my cooperating teacher has a printout of Bloom’s taxonomy stapled to her wall; and the lecture activated several of the levels theorized by Bloom. Students were engaged in the activity through the use of funny anecotes combined with real life examples. These techniques helped ensure the students were paying attention during the dry but important details found later in the lesson.
Students were instructed to take notes during the lecture, which was a power point presentation. An open note quiz immediately followed, and students were allowed to use use their notes. None of the questions completely reached the evaluation level. A couple of them were taken litterally straight from the lecture, and the other two addressed slightly higher levels of the taxonomy. The quiz did a good job of identifying the most important aspects of the material, but nonetheless was still fairly easy.
The group project following the quiz challenged the students to apply the information learned in lecture using their own creative impulses. Students were asked to design a product competing in a perfectely competitive model, using the models four basic tenets learned through the lecture. At the very least, the project approached the evaluation level; although student motivation determained how high up the ladder to climb. Students who tried to be innovative and challenge the material learned a lot.
