Non-curricular Microteaching Reflection

Peer Evaluations:

I taught a few of my peers how to play Whist (or at least, Whist as I've learned to play it.) I think it overall went fairly well and feedback was mostly positive. I think people had fun, which is probably the most important part! Not everyone in the group had previous experience playing trick-taking card games, but I felt that I did a good job checking for this knowledge and using this information to structure my lesson appropriately. I think I was also mostly prepared for any questions anyone had about how to play, and did a decent job of answering questions clearly when they arose. Also, I was naturally able to discuss some strategy at certain points of the demo and give people an opportunity to consider what their best options were, which I think did an effective job of getting them engaged and interested in a deeper understanding of the game.

I ended up modifying the lesson a bit on the fly. Instead of doing a few short practice tricks, then reshuffling and playing the start of a real game, I decided to let them continue their first few sets of tricks and keep playing the same game. This was nice for a few reasons:

-The game already had some amount of flow, so this avoided stopping that momentum

-Time reasons (it would've taken a few minutes to restart)

-Gave them more opportunity to experience mid-game strategy (i.e. playing with trump cards) rather than replaying more early-game.

This was nice, but it wasn't initially planned so I could've prepared for it a bit better. I could've anticipated the possible time constraints and realized that this would be a good way to save time. Next time, I should try doing a short demo just talking through a pretend lesson with myself to look for places where there might be confusion or opportunities for improvement.

I kept discussing rules with them until the end of the 10 minutes, so I didn't quite have them playing the game without my input, but I felt that most people had a decent understanding of the rules and some strategy by the end of the lesson. I think that they would be able to conduct a game amongst themselves without my help if they had the opportunity.