Peer teaching observation

So today I had my peer teaching observation. Manuela came to the last of the marine invertebrate practicals (ploychaetes) in MBIO105, which is also the hardest of the bunch, to give me some feedback about my teaching. As Andy had a student crying in his office, I got the session underway, reiterating to the students the reason why this sort of taxonomic work is important. I talked about my experience during one of the job interviews that I had with the Environment Agency last year. I think that enlightened them a bit more that identifying and drawing organisms is more than just an academic exercise.

I had hoped to move about the room as I always do with the students, but rather unfortunately, one of the students seemed to dominate my time with the identification of a single species. The student sitting next to her also became fairly demanding of my time. I found myself getting frustrated as I couldn't get away. I never want to discourage a student from learning, but these two were doing very little of it on their own. Then Nic started asking questions too and was getting frustrated with the specimens as he wasn't able to manipulate them in the right way to see the features. I was very frustrated by this stage. After about an hour or so, Manuela left and it was only then that I managed to get away from the students that had taken up most of my time during the practical. I was then able to move freely about the rest of room and engage with the rest of the cohort... typical.

One student that had been working on a specimen (Spirobis sp.) knew what the worm was from the outset. I told her that it was important to know what makes up that family and that she could then work backwards in the key to still learn, despite already knowing the genus. After an hour had passed, she was still working on the same specimen. I told her that she should move on to something new, picking a species she didn't know. She seemed slightly offended at this, but come on, how long can one faff over the same specimen and get nothing else done.

One of the demanding students came to me again, regarding the same specimen. Enough was seriously enough.

Looking back, how should I have handled this interaction better? Could I have done something differently that would have not upset the student, but allowed me to move on to the rest of the class?