micro-teaching floral design online

     Over the past 3 days I have been teaching floral design online at Berks career technical center. The first day I taught about why it’s useful to learn about floral design and create arrangements. The second day I went over the principals of floral design and some different types of arrangements that are common. The third day the students applied what they learned by creating a floral arrangement type we went over with at least 2 of the principles of design.  Below is one of the students awesome vertical arrangement that was made at the end of day 3. 

One thing that it reminded me of with teaching and learning is that your plan doesn’t always go the way you want it to and you have to make the most out of it. The first day there was a nation wide comcast internet lost which affected me and my school. we lost zoom about 4 times, but thankfully all the students hopped back on and we picked up where we left off. While I gave them an assignment to create, they kept working on it even when I lost internet. Since the multiple drops in internet I didn’t get to cover everything I wanted the first day which was fine I decided it wasn’t worth keeping them on zoom and it was not necessary for them to learn right at that moment. 

    I learned a lot through this experience, one of the main things was ways to keep students interacting on zoom. From the start I tried to set the standard of communication and interacting a lot with each other. This meant asking a lot of questions to the students and getting them to share their stories or views on things. Another way was when I was lecturing having them fill out a guided note sheet kept them paying attention to make sure they got the information because they knew there was going to be a review game at the end. Also, throughout the lecture there was multiple questions and things that I needed their opinions on to continue teaching.  Lastly, I also used a game at the end of the lecture that made sure they learned the information and they had fun competing for kudo points. I learned that switching it up every couple of slides or points with questions or something they had to do kept their attention which can be hard on zoom. 

    As a teacher I hope to be teaching in person but I can use what I learned from this experience in person as well. I will change the state of the learner every couple of minutes because even in person it’s hard to sit for 90 minutes. I also think that the students get a lot more out of the material when they get to be hands on and practice what was taught.