Week 2

Why is it important to include novelty in a lesson?

There are many different kinds of benefits for using novelty in a lesson. First, using novelty in a lesson means to add something unique that most teachers don't normally do when teaching. So when a teacher does use novelty in a lesson, they are using their creative ideas and incorporating them to get across to their students. Why is this important? Well, it is important because it will keep your students engaged. Keeping students engaged is one of the most important parts when teaching a lesson. If the students are engaged during your lesson, the more they will get out of it and learn.

Did you see novelty used during your classroom observation?

I was in a 7th and 8th grade math class. As I was taking notes, I tried to observe my teacher's teaching style and how engaged the students were. My teacher started off by asking questions about their last class and reviewed their past homework assignment. Some students raised their hands but most students were bored and not really engaged. Soon the teacher noticed that some students were not paying attention, so she started picking on students and asking them certain questions so she could see which students were following along and which were not. As the class went on the teacher used an over head projector to write the class notes on. She frequently asked questions and had the class repeat the answers several times so it would stick in their head. This shows that the students may have memorized something but may not have understood. The students were to write their own notes in their notebooks, but most didn't.

As I look back on this particular lesson, there was not much out of the ordinary and not a lot of novelty was used. We, as observers did walk around the room and tried to help students who were falling behind but this still was not exciting for the students. Since the students were learning about different class in this particular lesson, maybe the teacher could have used examples and shown the students flashy and exciting graphs rather than just discussing them. This may have engaged the students a little more.