Microteaching Session:

Exploring Color

Tonya Gentry
Science 3010

UVA Wise
Fall 2009
 Microteaching Reflection

In reflecting upon my microteaching session titled Exploring Color, I was able to

recognize both good and bad aspects of the lesson plan. There were ideas that I have
decided to eliminate while others I viewed as very positive and beneficial to the lesson. I
am going to break down the microteaching session into different sections and evaluate
each to process the positive and negative aspects that exist within that particular section.
I will design changes that I will make to the lesson plan itself as well as the way I chose
to present the given material.
I began the microteaching session using a PowerPoint slideshow to highlight main
ideas and terms and designed it to be colorful and engaging in itself. The slideshow
begins with a question that directly came from the main misconception I wanted to
address in the lesson. I believe overcoming this misconception is crucial for under-
standing color. I chose to begin the lesson this way to capture the class’ interest and
engage them to recall prior knowledge of light concepts. I know that an important key to
understanding color is having good general knowledge of the behavior of light. Because
of this reason I debated even presenting the topic of color as my microteaching session. I
initially thought that I should review basic concepts of light; however, I decided to
integrate the review of terminology within the lesson itself to encourage the class to recall
prior knowledge of light that should have already been introduced as part of the Light and
Color unit. In the end I felt that the class would benefit from the knowledge of color that
this lesson could give them.
I broke the “big” misconception question into three smaller questions that
introduced some important concepts for understanding color. The first concept I
introduced was to find out where color comes from. This question led to our exploration
phase of the lesson. I did not give the class direct instructions about how to perform the
activity or tell them what they should expect to see. I wanted them to make their own
observations first and use prior knowledge to explain the observations. I was surprised to
see how few of them used terminology to actually explain what they observed. Most of
the groups simply stated that they had to “twist” the prism to see the “colors.” Next I
used the slideshow to review observations that seemed pretty universal throughout the
entire class. I also used the slide to review correct terminology to explain what was
happening. I was pleased with the way the activity worked. However, I believe the class
would have benefited from a slide depicting Newton’s experiment where he used a prism
to separate sunlight into the visible spectrum. Maybe this would have shown that what
we observed was also attainable with other light sources as well, especially earth’s major
source of light, the sun.
After we had discovered the answer to where color comes from we moved on to
defining color. This definition makes the connection between the direct relationship of
light and color. We continued to the next question to try and explain how our eyes are
able to see color. Again this was a difficult point of deciding how much information I
should include. I decided, however, to simply give a brief description of what was
happening within our eye and brain that resulted in our eye “seeing” color. Since we had
answered all of the smaller questions we could now combine and use this new knowledge
to answer our initial question and clarify the misconception. I was pleased to see how
many students initially agreed with the misconception and logically concluded that color
was not a property of objects or matter, thereby overcoming the misconception. I feel I
did a good job helping them understand why this misconception probably exists and gave
them logical information to explain reasoning behind why it was incorrect. I would hope
this will help the class in their future classrooms in explaining color to their students.
Before concluding the lesson I wanted the class to be able to connect everything
we had discussed and apply it to common ideas. I created the application of rainbows
because I believe children and adults do not fully understand their formation. When
considering how rainbows are formed, one must apply knowledge of light and color to
understand what is happening. If one is able to explain such phenomena with s correct
and logical explanation then they have a good foundation of light and color concepts. I
created the rainbow chart as a form of assessment to see what the class had learned
during the lesson. I was pleased to see the class writing so many ideas on their charts.
When I introduced the activity and told them to write at least seven ideas they had
learned I immediately thought that this would be too much. However, after reflecting
upon the entire lesson plan and the information that was included I decided that seven
was a sufficient amount to assess the knowledge learned. I initially wanted to have the
class color in the rainbow chart as well to assess whether they could correctly order the
colors and put them in the correct position. Because I did not introduce concepts of
wavelength that specifically helped to define the differences in color, I chose not to have
the class do this. I may eventually use this in a later lesson to assess this concept.
If I could change anything else not already mentioned about the microteaching
session it would be to include more information on the visible spectrum that was the main
result of our exploration phase. In this way I could have discussed the differences in the
colors seen. However, to do so would have required so much more information and new
terminology that I thought it best to address this in another later lesson. I believe that
young students will begin to naturally question the differences and I did not want to
create confusion or contribute to any other misconception. I would have also provided
the learning log as part of the handout given to the class prior to the session. The class
could have then written down prior ideas and observation. Also I would have eliminated
the KWL chart because I feel like the learning log and the rainbow chart overlapped
somewhat.
Overall I believe the microteaching session was very successful. As I began the
session I was nervous because I feared I had included too much information that would
have made the lesson boring or overwhelming. In the end, however, I felt like the
information I provided was crucial and beneficial to the class’ understanding. I engaged
the class with lots of questions to elicit logical and thoughtful responses. I am
considerably happy with the outcome of the microteaching session.