Relevant Description

 This video, taken during my placement at East Dale Elementary School, is of the introduction for a lesson I developed called “The Friends of Hercules”. In this lesson, students learned about the history and characteristics of fantastic creatures from Greek Mythology, focusing on how many combine aspects of different animals to form powerful creatures. We also discussed how characters in current popular movies, books, and video games appropriate these creatures, such as those in Disney's Hercules to emphasize connections between ancient mythology, history, and popular culture. For the end product of the lesson, students desinged an original creature combining two animals and sculpted it with clay.

Most of the students had never worked wilth clay before, so during the introduction, I demonstrated how to shape the clay with the hands to avoid fagile add ons, how  to use the clay tools and the water to smooth cracks in the clay,  and to add texture.  Since visual learners benefit from seeing a demonstration using the materials and tools they will be using themselves close up, I have found the document camera is efficient tool that and allows all of the students to see detail all at once. 

Reflection

Recording my own teaching adds pressure, but it is also useful in reflecting and evaluating teaching style and finding habits and mistakes that might otherwise be missed. For example, I noticed that I could have allowed for more wait time or allowed more students the opprotunity to answer the questions. After the first day of the students scupting, I realized that I also should have demonstrated how to make sure the sculpture could stand solidly. Thanks to the teaching video, I was able to add that detail to the demonstrations for the next classes.