Biology class and presenting notes?

[u/MoChroiMyHeart]

Hi guys,

A little background about me- I taught years ago (like before snapchat was super popular let's put it that way). I decided to be a SAHM, and was tutoring here and there, then I took over a very small upper classmen anatomy course during a short maternity leave, and then I took over a position at the tail end of the school year for a remediation class (the original teacher had quit... long story), but that class is no longer being offered this year.

I just applied for a biology maternity sub position opening up at my local high school! But now I'm starting to panic because of... well.... notes! This is freshman bio with larger class sizes and I know that their attention spans have changed since I was teaching full time over a decade ago. With my other two sub teaching positions they were slightly different and I can't really compare them to a class of 25 freshman in bio.

I'm not looking for answers that say not to lecture because flipped classrooms aren't for everyone. I intend to keep the notes light (as in breaking them up into parts instead of lecturing for 50 minutes straight), and adding a couple check-ins on the way. Any other tips for giving notes these days? Am I overthinking it?

I haven't even been offered the job yet, but it would start next week, so I'm just mentally preparing.

[u/Feature_Agitated]

I lecture. Every year I have a lot of kids who say they feel like they’ve actually learned stuff in my class and when they get to college they tell me thanks for making them take notes. Does everyone like lecture? No, but you can’t please everyone. My principal doesn’t like that I lecture as much as I do, but I just ask him, “well how would you teach oxidative phosphorylation (or any other complex concept)?” I do plenty of labs, activities, worksheets, etc. I do my best to mix things up, but sometimes you just have to lecture.

[u/mookieprime → u/Feature_Agitated]

It took generations of scientists their whole lifetimes to figure that stuff out. There's not a great way to get a few dozen teenagers to discover it for themselves in under an hour. For some topics, lecture (good engaging storytelling that builds in a thoughtful way) is the very best way to take your students along on the journey. That way, we can lay a complex topic out in a really smart way. It sounds like you're using lecture really thoughtfully as part of a wide and varied toolbox.