The worst lesson yet... oh, and cold calling

Friday I taught my fourth (fifth, if you include a 'review and assess' day as a lesson) and definitely least successful lesson.  It was during fourth period.  The half before lunch was markedly worse than the half after, so I guess I can focus on how I managed to pull it together somewhat in the second half, but I couldn't really do that.  I was in a bad mood from about 6 minutes into my lesson until I finally let it go that night.  My set was interrupted and it threw me off and I spiraled into a confusing, rambling, pointing, vague question asking, ineffective, sleep inducing, boredom inspiring, well dressed "teacher."  Hey, I give credit where credit is due.  Lisa and Molly were unforgiving in their informal assessment of my lesson, which was super fun to sit through, but they're right.  I was bad.  It's frustrating to have the worst one come after seemingly good progress.  But, like I said, I think I was able to pull it together for the students to get something out of it at the end when they were answering my questions correctly and in reasonable time.  A small victory I'll cling to.

One of the things that I think distracted me was trying varying questioning techniques.  In evaluations I have received comments that I generally do a good job of questioning the students and waiting for an answer.  I usually ask for raised hands and call on students, but reserve the right to call on whomever I choose, mostly in an effort to involve everybody and keep those not paying attention involved, even if they're rather not be.  Fumbling around with index cards took some getting used to at first and caused my to lose my train of thought a couple of times, but by the end of the lesson cold calling became much more effective for me and all (5 of my) students were paying attention and expecting to be called on.  With a class of five, this worked well to keep each student involved and answering questions, but I'm not sure it was that much more effective than my usual technique.  With a class of 30, I'm afraid the effectiveness will decrease further if a group of students decide to play the odds that they won't be selected that day, or if they are, only once or twice.  I haven't given up on cold calling, though, and plan to at least give it a whirl in the fall for a change up, if nothing else.