Problem Solving Approach Lab Reflection

Lab Reflections: Problem Solving Approach

Problem: How do you demonstrate a problem solving approach lab in just 20 minutes? 

Keeping in mind that a good problem solving lesson also has students given prior background knowledge which will make them even more affective learners - I think that my attempts at demonstrating a problem solving approach lab went fairly well. 

The lesson I taught in lab was on developing a HACCP Protocol for a food production line. Here was the outline of the lesson:

• Review of Major Food Hazards
• Interest Approach - What caused the scenario to occur?
• Activity 1 - Identifying Hazards in the line
• Going over HACCP
• Activity 2 - Identifying Control Points in the line

There were aspects of my lesson I was really happy that I did and there are somethings that I saw that told me I need to flesh out some aspects of my classroom.

Likes:

Interest Approach - I liked how I had the students read a scenario and determine what was the cause of the problem. This helped make the students create a sense of ownership to the problem. Obviously there was only one problem but the students got the chance to identify it. One comment I found helpful with this was that I did a good job with having the students identify the problem what I should have did to expand upon it is go over what the students identified as the problem a bit more. I loved working on this interest approach and I think it was one of the more effective interest approaches I wrote up.

Informational Sheet - I had given the students an informational sheet which had the main concepts on it for the students.  The downside, the informational sheet I wrote was for college students so I will have to condense it down to cover what high school students need to know about when it comes to work.

Small Group work - I liked having the students figure out much of this themselves. It made the lesson less teacher centered even though in the Lesson Plan there was a bit of a script of what I would say and ask.

Room for Improvement:

• Papers in class - I gave the student a lot of papers in this lab. Like a whole lot of papers.  Thinking about this lab, I think for the next one I am not going to give them as many papers. 
• Lining Everything Up - Due to my time crunch I didn't have a lot of time to really break down my lesson and fine - tune aspects of it.  This meant that my interest approach was on meat sciences but the production line that I found pictures on was on Tofu. I think to improve this lesson I am going to have the students watch a very specific how its made video on a meat production line and go over with the students what they recorded as the production line.  This changes it up a little bit and then helps them start to see how HACCP really works.
• Trying to fit a long lesson into 20 minutes - I tried to fit an entire 45 minute less (probably longer than that really) into 20 minutes. What I should have focused on was teaching only 15 - 20 minutes of the lesson as a whole.  I think that was my downfall on this lesson today.  

For my next lesson I think I am going to try to hit a very minor area in a lesson and focus on just a couple of minutes of a lesson. 

To Be Continued . . .