Running Head: CT Observation Reflection 1

CT Observation Reflection

Miekal Morris

University of South Florida

 2
CT OBSERVATION REFLECTION

The Reflection

There were a few aspects that were implemented a little differently than I had planned.

Originally, the students were going to be doing this assignment over a four day span where

they focused on the vocabulary, beginning, middle, and end, however, my CT and I thought

that it would be better to focus on just the beginning and the end of the story. This happened

due to time constraints so before I started my lesson on the beginning, I refreshed on the

vocabulary.

If I was going to teach this lesson to the same group of students again, I would make sure

that I was a little more prepared and rehearsed what I wanted to say or cover prior to my

lesson. I was sick and let myself get a little too distracted from planning the lesson, however

it was not a distraction from presenting my lesson. I would have also made sure that I was

paying closer attention during the writing segment to student behavior. I felt that as soon as

my focus was shifted towards writing, the students also lost focus during the lesson which

lead to distracting behavior.

What surprised me during my lesson was how involved the students were during the

reading section of my lesson. For the most part, students were paying attention and were

actively participating. I was also surprised that the student work was done very well

considering a few students had trouble losing focus during the writing segment of my lesson.
 3
CT OBSERVATION REFLECTION

The Analysis

Overall, the lesson went pretty well. I am my own worst critic and will always look for

areas that need to be improved. Looking over student work and the video recording of my

lessons, I can see that my students were learning the content that was being taught during my

lesson. At about 11:32min into the lesson, I was in a group discussion about evidence in the text

and illustrations that shows the Sheila Rae was brave and her sister Louise was a scardy cat.

Several students were able to pull evidence from the text to show that the characters were feeling

brave or scared. I feel that my modeling of the writing was not as effective as I would have liked

because my penmanship is not what the students are used to and it was a major distraction for

them. I found myself having to pause and go back over a couple areas a few times. I was given

the materials for this lesson, and found out halfway through the lesson that there was not enough

space for the students to write all of their information, so I had to quickly come up with a

solution as I was giving the lesson. I had the students fold the paper and continue to write on the

back of the paper, which most students did successfully.

The group that had the most difficulty with this lesson struggled mostly because they

were not paying attention to the read aloud or lost focus when it was time to create their writing

piece. I feel that if I had a brain break before going into the writing portion of the lesson, might

have helped with distracting behavior and loss of focus. The group that did really well with this

lesson, were my higher level readers in the classroom who were trying to impress the teacher

with as much detail as they could recall. They were very focused during the read aloud and they

were able to retell the instructions before the transition occurred.

For this lesson, the next steps would be to revisit the beginning of the story and read

aloud the ending of the story and engaging in a discussion about how the characters feelings
 4
CT OBSERVATION REFLECTION

changed from the beginning to the end of the story. We will be going over evidence in the text

and illustration to back up our thought process. I will also implement a brain break activity

before the writing section of the lesson and keep an eye on behaviors by selecting students to clip

up or down based on their behavior.

 5
CT OBSERVATION REFLECTION
 6
CT OBSERVATION REFLECTION
 7
CT OBSERVATION REFLECTION
 8
CT OBSERVATION REFLECTION
 9
CT OBSERVATION REFLECTION
 10
CT OBSERVATION REFLECTION