MUS Reflection- Juliana

I don’t have very much experience teaching in a school classroom setting, so the trip to MUS was very interesting for me. Compared to leading the field trip programs at MOXI, I think that the students were generally more focused since they were in a familiar setting at their own school. During field trips at MOXI, I think that the students are sometimes a bit distracted by being in a fun and exciting new place, and they will often ask me when they get to go out and explore in the museum. I think this made facilitating the activity easier, however this could just be due to the preparation the students at MUS have had and the school’s resources. It would be interesting to see how this might differ in other schools.

One challenge that we had was getting the students to understand the difference between the three iterations. It was also difficult to get the group to all build the same thing in the third round, because after two rounds of building on their own, they became very invested in perfecting that design. I like Destiny’s idea of having the first round of building be as a group, and the second and third round be on their own. Another thing I noticed is that a lot of students ended up building parachutes just like they had in the week prior for CEa. I wonder if it would make a difference in what they build if we were to skip the parachute discussion at the beginning, or even to switch CEa and CEb completely.

When facilitating the second class with Kevin, we also struggled a little with getting the class’s attention between rounds since there is a lot of back and forth. As Danielle mentioned in class, it is definitely important to go back and forth between speaking to the class and having the class do an activity so that you’re not just lecturing for 30 minutes and having a 30-minute activity following that. I liked Danielle’s suggestion of coming up with some sort of MOXI attention getter to make it fun for the class and a little easier for the facilitator.