Skype Reflection

1)    My group presented the punctuation mini lesson. The way we presented it to the kids was using a traffic light analogy, which I thought helped them to understand better. After reading the six word memoirs they wrote, I felt as though they picked up on the topic of punctuation quite well. The idea of the traffic light helped them understand. The red light was used to represent the period, the yellow light represents the coma, and the green light was used to represent the explanation mark. For the question mark, we came up with the analogy of a pothole in the road. First, you would wonder why it was there, then swerve around it, making the shape of a question mark. We drew a diagram of all of these things, which I believe helped show a visual of what we were explaining.

2)     I feel our mini lesson went well. Even before we started presenting, they were commenting on how the previous memoirs were missing a period, which shows that they knew a bit about punctuation. Throughout the mini lesson they seemed to be understanding, and when we saw the memoirs they wrote with the punctuation all there, shows that they got it. I believe the only weakness we had with our group was not being able to get everyone to say something during the presentation, because we had a fairly large group.

3)    What I learned about this process was that teaching helps me understand the topic better. Even though I knew how to use proper punctuation before, the analogy of the traffic light added a different visual for me. I believe that teaching and learning are both connected; when you teach, you learn.

4)    I think we should continue to help teach them about the topics that we are currently learning. I think we should do this, because I feel like teaching the topic helped me to understand it to a larger extent. Not only do they learn from us, but we get a deeper understanding of the topic from creating the lessons.