TWS 8: Reflection, Self-Evaluation & Professional Development Channa Griham Reflection: Showcase Lesson When looking back at my showcase

lesson, there were many decisions that I had to make as a professional to make sure that the students benefited from my instruction. One of the main ways to draw students into learning something new is by engaging them. During my science lesson on wind, I had to make decisions that would impact the learning of my students. To start off the lesson I decided to do a demonstration that would introduce the students to the topic of wind. By seeing the demonstration, the students were able to see wind in action and could connect it to the classroom environment. Engaging the students is a very important aspect to having a successful lesson. By doing the demonstration with the fan and balloon, students were able to make understanding of how wind can affect objects. I believe that my demonstration at the beginning of the lesson was a positive thing because my students were able to make connections between the demonstration and the experiment that they conducted during the investigation portion of the lesson. During the lesson, students would refer back to the fan demonstration and connected the balloon with other items that they experimented with. During my lesson, I found a few things that I could have done differently to improve my lesson. One of the things that I could have done different was the idea of the line of learning. I instructed the students to write a cursive L on the top of their paper and this was a little confusing to the 2nd graders. I believe that the students were not familiar with a cursive L, so it made it difficult for them to draw it. In this lesson or my future lessons, I could just have the students right a capital L across the page so that it would be easier for them. As I observed the students during this portion of the lesson, I realized that I needed to walk around and help some of the students create their L and this took valuable time away from the lesson. Another thing that I could have done different was to implement cooperative learning with my students. I could have had the students work with a partner so that they could discuss what they were seeing and they could analyze together the information that they were collecting. This could lead to deeper discussion and could also help those students who were struggling through the lesson. In a future lesson, I would incorporate cooperative learning with my students so that it could benefit their learning. The final changes I believe I could have implemented into my lesson, was that I could have walked around the room and hold a discussion with each table. During my lesson, I stood in front of the class and instructed the class on what we were observing, doing and how this connects with wind. Instead of doing this in a future lesson, I would walk around during the exploration phase and hold small conversations with the students to help them analyze and comprehend what they were doing. I believe that the

students already understood what they were doing during this experiment, but I could start a discussion that would lead to deeper thinking. This could get the students to think on a higher level and could lead to a better comprehension of the concept. This addition would not change my lesson drastically, but it would be a great strategy to implement to improve the outcome of the lesson. When connecting my assessment with the outcome of the students learning, I believe that my decisions throughout my lesson helped the students comprehend. When observing the students during my lesson, I found that the students comprehended the concept of moving air, also known as wind. I noticed that there was small discussion going on at the groups and the students were making meaning of what they were observing. For the assessment portion of my lesson, I asked the students draw the line of Learning L on the top of their paper. After they have done this, I asked each student to write in their science notebooks one sentence of what they have learned through this experiment about wind. If the students finished earlier than others, they were instructed to draw a picture that supports what they have learned through this lesson. When reviewing these assessments, I used a rubric to grade the students understanding of the concept of wind. The rubric was based on a scale of 0-3; with 3 being the student mastered the concept. When reviewing the graded rubric of each student, I have calculated that about 70 percent of my students mastered the concept of wind, 20 percent of my students partially understand the concept of wind and about 10 percent of my students need more instruction on the concept of wind. With these results, I can see how my students benefited from this lesson. After analyzing my instructional decisions, I found that there are many factors that helped the students to benefit from this lesson. One of the main things that I believe helped my students to comprehend was by asking probing questions during the lesson. As each student experimented with the different objects in their bag, I would ask them questions that would help them make sense of what they were observing. For example, when the students observed the dice moving extra slow, I asked them why do you think the dic e was harder to move than the feather. Through this class discussion, I was able to see that the students were able to make the connections between the strength of the wind on the object and how heavy the object was. In the beginning of the lesson, I asked the students to think about this as we went along throughout our experiment. Another decision that I believe benefited the students was the demonstration at the beginning of my lesson. By showing the students the experiment with the balloon and the fan, I believe that it engaged them in the lesson. This engagement made the students to want to learn about moving air and gave them interest in wanting to complete the experiment. This was beneficial because it causes every student to fully participate during the investigation portion of my lesson. If I wouldnt have started out with this activity, I believe that my students would not find interests in what they would be learning. By seeing the balloon in action, the students were able to see wind in motion and were able to predict what they would be observing during their experiment.

Engaging your students in learning is very important and can lead to a more successful lesson in the end. Also with these results and assessments, I could figure out where my low performing students were having problems in comprehending. As I was reviewing the students science notebooks, I noticed that many of my low performing students were not able to make connections between the objects and how wind impacts these objects. Many of these students did not understand that the amount of wind they asserted on the object, determines how the object moves. One thing that I could do differently next time, is that I could make everyone stop their experiment, have all eyes on me and I can demonstrate what it is like when you assert more force. I would use the dice to demonstrate this so that they can see that I have to assert more wind with my straw so that the dice could move. I believe this will help the students understand that the heavier the object, the more wind that has to be asserted on the object. By doing this, I could increase my percentage of students who mastered the concept by helping those who received lower than a 3 to understand fully the concept of wind. 3 Individual Students When analyzing my data, I found that my student who was most successful in gaining knowledge from this lesson surprised me. The student who was the most successful started at a 1 at the beginning of the lesson and during the post assessment the student had reached a 3. This was surprising to me because this student receives accommodations for being an English Second Learner student. Usually during lessons, this student is very quiet and usually does not volunteer to answer questions. In the beginning of my showcase lesson, this student was living up to the reputation of not participating. But as the lesson went on, this student was raising their hand and answering many questions that I had asked. I noticed as the student was answering the questions, they really understood what the lesson was about. This student used a lot of detail when they were giving their answers and referred back to previous information observed in the lesson. One reason I believe that this student was successful was because this student had been moved from their normal seat prior to the lesson. Maybe the reason why the student was not participating in the lessons before was because of who she was sitting by or where she was sitting. After this lesson, I discussed with my cooperating teacher this observation and we realized that this student needs to remain in the new seat they were moved to. Another reason I believed this student had success was because of the hands on demonstrations that I provided at the beginning of the lesson. I believe that this demonstration catered to this students need to see a visual of what needed to be done. I believe that this student understood the concept because they were able to see what was expected when conducting the experiment. When analyzing my data, I also found that one student was not very successful at gaining knowledge on the objective. When looking at the results of the assessment, my student

who was least successful did not gain any knowledge from the lesson. The student started on a 2 and ended on a 2. This shows me that the student has prior knowledge on the topic, but the student was not able to expand this knowledge to master the concept. This student is one of the low performers in the class due to the lack of motivation. The student who was my least successful has problems with paying attention to the lessons being taught. This student also has accommodations that are being addressed through collaboration with my cooperating teacher and other resources in the school. I believe that this lack of motivation to learn and the lack of focus in the classroom held the student back from being able to gain new knowledge on the objective at hand. In future lessons, a way that I could help this student to be successful is by working one on one with the student to help this student stay focused and also help this student complete their work. When reviewing this students work I noticed that this student did not use good details to support their answers and was not able to form complete sentences to explain what they have learned. This could be due to the lack of motivation and the lack of focus. During this lesson, I also found that my average student did really well when gaining knowledge on this objective. In the beginning of this lesson the student started at a 2 and ended the lesson with a 3. This student was able to make understanding of the concept and use the information they already knew to help them reach the highest level of understanding during the lesson. One reason I believe that this student was successful was because the student was engaged in the experiment the whole time. While observing the student, I realized that this student was completing each stage of the experiment and making connections between the various objects that were being testing. This engagement allowed the student to make understanding of what they were observing during this experiment. Another reason why I believe that this student was successful was because this student was actively participating in discussion. During this discussion, I was asking this student questions that caused them to think deeper into the topic and the answers that I was given were very well thought out and had support to back up the answers. In order to improve this students learning, there is not much more that I could do. If there was anything that I could help this student with would be the writing portion of the lesson. I would help this student understand that using support from the lesson will help make their explanation more solid. Overall, the student was where I expected them to be at the end of the lesson. During the lesson, there was a reaction from a student that caused me to become flexible on how I was going to proceed with the next section of my lesson. During the experiment phase, there was a student who wondered why the dice would not move like the other objects. To help this student understand this, I stopped the class with what they were doing and brought everyones eyes back to me at the front of the classroom. During this time, I began to show the students what it looked like when you asserted wind on the dice. I then did

the same thing with the other objects in the bag. After I was done with this, I asked the students why they thought that the dice was harder to move than the feather, cotton ball and piece of paper. Many of the students noticed that the dice was heavier than the other objects so I was able to start a discussion on how this would affect the way the dice moved. After we had a whole class discussion about what we observed and I explained to the students what was happening, I let the students continue to experiment with the objects in their bag. After the experiment phase was completed, I made sure that I recapped what we had discussed about the dice compared to the other objects. I did this so that the students could hear again the relationship between the wind and the weight of each item. By doing this, I thought that my students would be able to understand easier the connection between the two and they had some guidance in creating the overall conclusion about the dice and other objects. When reviewing the post assessments, I was able to see that this demonstration helped many students to explain in their sentences what they had learned that day during that lesson. What I hoped the demonstration would do for my students was shown to be true in the post assessment. Reflections on additional lessons Lesson 1- Math For my first additional lesson, I was teaching the children how to skip count in math. While teaching this lesson there were many different instructional decisions that I used based on my students and their learning. One instructional decision I decided to make that would benefit my students was by having a demonstration at the beginning of my lesson. To start off the lesson, I decided to bring the class together as a whole to introduce he topic. Instead of just having the students do the work on their own to begin with, I did a couple of problems with them to guide them in the right direction to solve the problems. I decided to do this so that the students would be able to see an example on how to complete the work correctly and what I expected to see when they worked independently at their desk. By doing this, the students were able to see the problem and solution worked out correctly in front of them. During the lesson, there were some decisions that I had to make to meet accommodations for the students who needed them. When students were asked to complete the rest of their problems on their own, I found that some students were still having trouble understanding the concept of skip counting. With seeing this, one decision I decided to make was to pull these students to the table in a group and to work with these students on these problems. As a group we solved the problems and I would ask the students to explain to me how they got the answer they did. This strategy seemed to help the students that were struggling and in the end the students benefited from having this small group instruction. By having these interactions with the students, I believe that they benefited greatly from it. When considering working with this small

group of students, I think it was fair to everyone that I took time to help these students understand. The students that were pulled to small group were mainly my students who have the most trouble in math. So by giving them this extra help, I allowed them the chance to improve in math and to gain better knowledge of the concept. For the students who were not involved in the small group, I believe that I showed fairness because they already understood the concept and did not need extra help to complete the assignment. I believe that by using the instructional mode of pulling this small group together, helped me guide those students who needed more help or more guidance understand the concept. In my future lessons, I would make sure that I always offer my assistance to those students who will need extra help on completing the problems that they are assigned. Also for my future lesson, I would possibly incorporate cooperative learning between the students so that the students would have support from their peers and would be able to build off each others ideas. Lesson 2: Social Studies When creating this lesson to teach my students, I decided to implement a read aloud into the lesson. When reading to young children, you are able to spark interest in your students and engage them in what they are learning. Throughout this lesson I used childrens book to teach my students about the three different types of communities, rural, urban and suburban. I decided to teach the lesson like this because the students were able to see various pictures that described what it would look like in each of these different communities. From the reaction and results of the students, I believe that this decision was beneficial for them to grasp the concept and to understand the different types of communities. One way that I decided to present my information clearly was by completing a chart with the students that compared and contrasted each of the different communities. After completing the unit, the chart was hung in the classroom so that the students could reference it in the future. During this lesson, I was able to connect this lesson to the everyday lives of the students. When discussing the different communities, I asked the students to think about what kind of community they lived in. I asked them to use characteristics from the different books I used during read aloud to help them figure out what type of community they lived in. I also connected the lesson to describe what the town of Greenwood would be considered. By doing this, students were able to see the purpose behind the lesson and how they can connect this to their everyday lives. Resulting from incorporating a read aloud for this lesson, my students were able to grasp the concept of the different types of communities. All of my students were able to understand the differences between all of these communities and were able to score very high on the summative assessment that was given to them at the end of the unit. By using books, students were able to see visuals of what these communities would look like and were able to make the connections necessary to understand the concept. In my future lessons, I would possibly include projects in this unit that the students could participate in. I would have these projects be extended to

make connections with the different types of communities. When thinking about classroom management procedures that I implemented during the lesson, there were a few that impacted the overall lesson. Of these were having the students who were having a hard time to sit on the carpet to return to their seat. For the few students who are not able to join their classmates on the carpet without having problems, I nicely invited them back to their seat for the remainder of the lesson. After I had made this change, I was able to get through the lesson with little to no interruptions. Another technique used was having the students raise their hands to answer questions that were being asked instead of blurting out the answer. For the students who could not follow this rule, they were also invited back to their seats for the remainder of the lesson. By having this type of structure during the lesson, I was able to get through the lesson and complete the lesson in the time frame that I had allowed myself for this lesson. This allowed me to transition to the next lesson accordingly and on schedule. Lesson 4: Science During this lesson there were a few instructional decisions that I made in order to benefit my students and their quality of learning. In the beginning of this lesson, I decided to use a poem to help the students recap what we had learned in the previous science lesson. For this lesson, I created a What am I poem that discussed the characteristics of wind and described some of the things that wind could do. To engage the students, I had them to read the poem and asked them to look at the clues and words in the text to figure out what the poem was talking. By doing this I was triggering the students prior knowledge and helping them to make connections from the information learned in the previous lesson. During the lesson, I made decisions that could accommodate many of the students in my classroom. One of the things that I did was I decided to read the questions to the children from their worksheet. Many of the children are not able to read informational questions on their own successfully, so by me reading them, they were able to understand the question that they were being asked. If the students did not have me reading the questions to them, I believe that the results of the questions would not have been successful. For this lesson, I decided to do it as a whole group. By having the class discussions, students were able to build off of each other and create answers off of the thoughts of their fellow classmates. By doing this, I was hoping to cause the children to think deeper and for the students to have the chance to participate in a more meaningful discussion. After reviewing the students performance, in the future I would possibly incorporate time for independent work. As I was reviewing the assessments from this lesson, I realized that many of the students were writing down the answers that their classmates were giving during the discussion time. If the student actually learned something from what the other students said, then this would not be a problem. My only concern is that the students may have heard someone say it and only repeated what they had heard. This does not give me a real accurate measure of what the students as an individual can actually achieve.

When thinking of effectiveness of resources, I believed that the poem really help the students understand what we would be talking about that day during the lesson. It seemed that many of the students were referring back to the poem when they were making connections about what wind could do and the effect that wind had on certain objects. I would consider my use of the poem to be effective and helped my students to become successful during this lesson. During this lesson, I also had to enforce some classroom management techniques onto some of my students. During the lesson, there were some students who were not able to sit at their desk without bothering others around them. To fix this problem, I moved these students closer to me so that I could control their behavior and so I could keep a watch on them during the remainder of my lesson. Lesson 5: Math The main reason that I created this lesson did due to some of my students not understanding how to write numbers in expanded form. After reviewing some of the results of the students math scores, I realized some students in the class needed more help on understanding this concept. One instructional decision I made to help these students was to create a small group guided lesson to teach this concept. While teaching this lesson, I made sure that I worked one on one with these students to help them understand what a number looks like to be written in expanded form. By giving these students this individual attention, I was catering to their need of needing more help understanding the concept. After the lesson was over, I saw a tremendous change in my students understanding and I was able to see their individual progress. In a future lesson, I would use the results of those students who still were not able to understand the concept to plan a future individual lesson that would be directed on this students needs. I would base this lesson solely around the students level of learning and make sure that I teach it in a way that this student could benefit from it. During this lesson, my students were actively involved in the learning process. During this lesson, the students really wanted to get the right answer to the problem and were engaged the whole time. It almost seemed like there was a little friendly competition going on between the groups of students that I was working with. I was able to relate this lesson to content that the students would be assessed on throughout the nine weeks. Every week, the students are given a test and on this test they are given a problem that deals with expanded form. By giving this extra lesson on expanded form, I hoping to see a higher success rate on these test in future classes. During this lesson, there was a lot of interaction between the students and I. During these interactions, I made sure that I was fair in giving each student the equal amount of one on one time with me. I wanted to make sure that every students had the chance to work with me and also had the chance for me to explain to them what they were doing wrong with the problem. Professional Development

One professional development goal that I feel like I need to improve on after this clinical experience would be my classroom management skills. Sometimes when I was in the classroom, I felt like the students looked to me as someone who was kind and was easy to get what they wanted. Sometimes I would find myself doing things for the students that my cooperating teacher usually wouldnt. For example, if the student needed their shoes tied my cooperating teacher would tell them to find a friend to help them. When they came to me, I would usually do it for the. Students need to be taught to have more responsibility so that when they get older they can be more successful in doing things on their own. Another thing that I noticed was that when I taught sometimes, the students would feel like they could talk and I wouldnt say anything. This was somewhat true, until I felt like it got out of control. To have a solid classroom management plan, I need to be able to keep students attention so that they will not miss anything important that I am teaching. Also, if the students are talking, they may be distracting other students around them and can take away from that students learning. In my future classrooms, I will need to set limits with my students in the classroom without causing tension between us. I will also need to properly handle the students who are disruptive and who are causing problems in my classroom. By having a well-rounded classroom management plan I can build positive students-teacher relationships. Another thing that I noticed I need to improve on as a professional is my time management skills. Even though I was successful in creating my lesson plans on time, I feel like there were many things that I could change in the classroom that could improve my use of time. One of the main things that I need to improve on is staying on schedule. Many times in my clinical I noticed that I went over my time limit that I set for my individual lessons. For example, if I gave myself thirty minutes to complete a math lesson, I usually took a whole hour to finish the lesson and to wrap up the lesson with my students. Having good time management skills are important as an educator. This can lead to a more effective and successful classroom environment. One way that I can work towards this goal would be to eliminate distractions during my lessons. By dealing with the actions of students accordingly and planning ahead I can improve the time I spend on each individual lesson. If the necessities for my lesson are prepared in advance I could eliminate having to use valuable instruction time to get these materials prepared. By planning my activities out a week ahead, I could make sure to have all of the materials ready that I will need to teach all of the lessons that I have planned for my classroom for that week. Being prepared and using my time wisely can help me to have a more successful classroom in the future.