11th Grade — Peer Teaching: A Mini-Workshop for Underclassmen

⏰ Do Now — Start Here

If you had 10 minutes to teach a 9th grader one design skill, which one would actually be useful to them right now?

🎯 Today's Big Question

What do we understand better about a skill once we have to teach it to someone younger than us?

📈 By the End of Today, You Will Be Able To

Prepare a short, clear mini-lesson teaching one real design skill to 9th or 10th grade students.
Deliver the mini-lesson, adjusting explanation based on the audience's questions.
Reflect on what preparing to teach revealed about their own mastery of the skill.

🧰 What You'll Need

One skill from earlier this year to teach
Coordination with a 9th/10th grade class

📋 Your Plan for Today

Day 1: Prepare

Independent work (35 min): plan a short mini-lesson on one real skill, including a simple activity for the younger students.

Day 2: Teach & Reflect

Deliver mini-lesson to a 9th/10th grade class (20-25 min).
Written reflection (15 min): what preparing to teach revealed about your own understanding.

🖥️ Today's Slide Deck

Short, on-the-board pacing slides — project these to follow along. (The full details are in the handout above, not here.)

Day 1

⬇️ Open / download this slide PDF

Day 2

⬇️ Open / download this slide PDF

📚 Key Words

Mini-Lesson: A short, focused teaching segment built around one specific, teachable skill.

✅ What Your Finished Work Should Include

Mini-lesson assessed for clarity and audience-appropriate explanation; reflection checked for genuine insight.

Exit Ticket: What question from a younger student was hardest for you to answer clearly?

📊 Before You Leave

Quick, anonymous class check-in -- takes less than a minute.

Class Check-In

📁 Portfolio Update — Once a Week

Once a week (e.g. every Friday, or your class's last meeting of the week), add your best finished or in-progress work to a running portfolio folder with a 1-2 sentence caption: what it is, what skill or standard it shows. This becomes your formal Google Sites portfolio in Unit F -- keep it current all year so you're not scrambling right before your PBAT and portfolio review.

✍️ Example description for your Google Sites portfolio (fill in YOUR blanks -- don't just copy this):

For this piece, I made ______________ (name what you made) for “Peer Teaching: A Mini-Workshop for Underclassmen.” This project asked: “What do we understand better about a skill once we have to teach it to someone younger than us?” I used Mini-Lesson by ______________ (explain how you used it in THIS piece). The hardest part was ______________, and I solved it by ______________. I'm proud of ______________ because ______________.

🔗 Want to Learn More?

No extra links for this lesson.

🚀 The Extra Mile

Cross-Class Connection: The same teaching/pedagogy skill relevant to any Education-track elective.

Career Connection: Mentoring and teaching are named skills on multiple career pages — studio leads and art directors do this constantly.

Go further -- turn this into a portfolio piece:

Turn your mini-lesson into a reusable handout for future classes. Start here: outline your mini-lesson's three key points and build the handout around just those three, not everything you know.
Record the lesson (with permission) as a short tutorial video for your portfolio. Start here: get written or verbal permission first, before you set up any recording equipment.