Reflection, Self Evaluation, & Professional Development

Whole Class Reflective Discussion: Instructional decision making was used throughout this Science Unit. There were many occasions when I had to go back and re-teach or review the foundation of the unit. This impacted the whole class positively and negatively at the same time. This class of 23 has 4 ESOL students, 3 students with IEPs, and 8 GATAS students. The students who were positively impacted were the students who need special accommodations. This would require me to slit lessons over two or three days or monitor and adjust and re-teach when needed. When required to re-teach I would use a different teaching technique such as visual representation or hands on activities. This would give the students the same information previously taught, but in a different package. The negative impact would be the GATAS students who would be re-taught material they already had a grasp on. This would cause me to have to come up with review work or extensions related to the current lesson to keep their minds on what is going on. This keeps everyone on the same page, just at different levels of learning. As mentioned before, the students in this class are all on different achievement levels. During my unit there were several occasions when I needed to monitor and adjust my lesson from day to day. A constant occurrence was on Tuesdays when GATAS was out of the room. These students left class at 8:30 am and did not return until lunch time at 12:10 pm. When there was a review game or a hands- on project scheduled for that day then our science time would be switched with math or moved to the next day. When teaching a lesson and the students were visually confused, I would use the next day to review to ensure understanding, before moving on to the next lesson. This was very evident when abiotic and biotic factors were introduced. The students could identify living and non living things, but when they were asked to explain abiotic and biotic factors they continued to mix the two up. My remedy to this was to use a visual representation approach. During the review portion of my lesson I displayed pictures of living and non living things and asked students to identify which was abiotic and which was biotic. After they identified the picture I asked them to explain why it was either abiotic or biotic. Allowing students the chance to visualize the factors in picture form helped students to get a visual representation of the difference between the two factors. By the end of the review the students had a genuine understanding of the difference between abiotic and biotic. The pre assessment showed that they had no idea what abiotic and biotic factors were, so I knew it would be starting from scratch with this information. After the lesson and the review on the following day students had the foundation of the unit and were ready to move on to the next section of the unit. The learning objective for this section was for students to be able to summarize the composition of an ecosystem, considering both biotic factors and abiotic factors. After this week I feel the objective was reached and students were more than capable of differentiating between abiotic and biotic factors. The post assessment proved that the students were ready to move on to

the next section of the unit and build on the material they had learned during this first week of the unit. This unit was a joy to teach the students really got involved during the lessons and enjoyed the hands on activities that came with it. My strategy to get the students motivated was to allow the students to be involved with the lesson. I had open discussions and allowed students to come to the board and add to t-charts and illustrations. The students responded better to this teaching strategy then with lectures. During this unit I started out using the dry erase board, but as the unit progressed I was more comfortable with the Smartboard I used it daily. The students also watched Brain Pop and Study Jams videos at the end of lessons to give visuals and more information to go along with the lesson that was just taught. The students responded well to the demonstrations, discussions, hands-on activities, and videos. These resources that were provided by my cooperating teacher really added to learning experience for my students. If I were to teach this unit again I would defiantly schedule activities on days when all students were in class. It may be a hard task with the classrooms being main-streamed and with students going in and out for various reasons, but I would be a better option than to have to push back lessons and re-teach lessons. I would also allow more time for this specific core subject. When teaching, 30 minutes is not a lot of time to get things done and a lot of times lesson have to be spread out over days to get them completed. When teaching my unit I always went over my 30 minutes and usually had to monitor and adjust other subjects to get back on schedule. At the end of each lesson I would review the material that was taught and assign their homework (if any). The homework would be directly related to the lesson. For example; the first homework assignment given was for students to identify and record 5 abiotic and 5 biotic factors that they find in their home. This was a way for students to relate real life to the lesson. This unit was a success and the students were very into what we were doing. I think the objectives were achieved and the students had a good time achieving them. Three Individual Students High Performer: This student has gone above and beyond on all the work he has been assigned. This student is an A Honor Roll student, as well as a GATAS student. This students always turns in his best work and the result of this is quality work. The objectives taught throughout this lesson did not seem to cause him any problems and in some cases I would have to alter my lessons to cater to him as well as the other GATAS students who caught on early. The instruction I decided to use varied from lectures, to hands-on activities, and real life connections. I think varying my instruction helped to keep this student engaged, because each lesson brought something new and it wasnt just the teacher talking and the students listening. I also think outside influences have allowed him to be a great student as well; his parents are very involved in the school and have stated their expectations on more than one occasion. I noticed that when we had discussions he always had a story to tell and I was able to use information he shared and connect it to the lesson. For example, he hunts with his father and during my lesson about

limiting factors I was able to use the fact that hunting is one type of limiting factor. When I was able to connect his interest to the lesson I received an even better response from this student. Low Performer: This student has not experienced success since the 1st grade. This student is one of my ESOL students but he puts forth little effort in class and barely turns in any work, so the grade book is full of holes because of this. This student is a ESOL pull- out as well as a resource student. When he is in class he sleeps. After about a week into my unit my teacher and I found out that he was on a 1st grade reading level which means he was completely lost with the content being taught because he could not read the text books or study guides. To try and help this student achieve success I would send test and class work to ESOL and resource with him and these teachers would go over the lessons with him while he was out of the room. This helped because he was out of the class during our Science time. The issue that then arose was the fact that he was unable to retain information from day to day. When he was given his test, they were given orally, and he was also given hints to push him into the right direction towards the correct answer. This helped a little, but his lack of effort made it harder to help him. If I was able to do anything differently I would maybe alter his curriculum and have him work on his level. He would do 1st grade science and get graded as if he was doing what the rest of the class was doing. I think this would help, because he would be able to comprehend what he was doing and he would start to experience success. Being that he is ESOL he will automatically be passed to the next grade I think allowing him to experience success might help him in the future to put forth effort and to not give up so easily, because in the upper grades certain accommodations will no longer be available. Average Performer: This student is also one of my ESOL students in the room. This student has showed a genuine love for school and is eager to learn and participate during lessons. This student made the A/B Honor Roll and continues to strive to do her best. When giving answers in class she sometime doubts herself and will raise her hand, then change her mind. I try to probe her to answer anyway, because in most cases she has the correct response. During my unit I noticed that this student was very into hands- on activities, and after being here for a while Im starting to see that she is getting better at opening up and actively participating in group discussions and sharing her answers to homework or classwork. At parent conferences we met her dad and it is obvious that he wants his children to have a good education. He made it perfectly clear that he does not want his children to work as hard as he has to. Having a concerned parent plays a big role in student success as well. When I implemented hands-on activities and projects she always went above and beyond to make sure her assignment was neat and obtained the maximum points. At the end of my unit this student showed great improvement with participation and it even spilled over into other core subjects. If I could do anything differently I would make sure I implemented more hands- on activities and partner work which would allow her to participate one with her partner instead of making her participate with the entire class. I think this would have helped her to come out of her shell a little sooner.

During one of my unit lessons I was discussing food chains and during the lesson I had the students create a food chain in their science notebook. I told the students it did not have to be perfectly artistically drawn, because we did not have a lot of time for that. After the allotted time I allowed the students to share the food chains they created. Well on more than one occasion students did an ocean food chain and they would have sharks eating humans. This does happen, but scientifically humans are at the top of the food chain. I had to address this and students wanted to debate that sharks do eat humans. This caused me to go back and break down each part of the food chain. I had to remind students that the predator hunts the prey, making up for the primary and secondary consumers in the food chain. When I explained that sharks do not hunt humans they began to see why this was an incorrect representation of an ocean food chain. If given the chance to change anything about his lesson I would address that just because an animal may eat of attack a human does not make them the primary consumers in a food chain. I would use the shark and human example so that students knew before they created their food chain that this was not a correct representation. I would show a picture of an article explaining why sharks sometimes eat or attack humans. They are mistaken for seals. I think if they see or read this from a different source they will have more than one representation of the information and this could help them reach a better understanding. Professional Development On my previous reflection of professional goals I indicated that I needed to extend my instruction time. Well, this is still a slight issue, because in an elementary classroom I have to learn to shorten my lessons. My unit was a science unit and the time allotted for science was only 30 minutes compared middle schools which are 50 minute classes. The goal to correct this would be to monitor and adjust according to the classroom I am in. I have learned that in some cases I have to slit lessons over a few days when in the is classroom and if that is the case then when are doing activities then modeling and passing out of materials will be done on day 1 and the actual activity will be completed on the next day. My student teaching helped me see this flaw that I needed to work out. By the end of my student teaching I had learned to monitor and adjust so that my class time was effective and the students were able to get all of the subjects they were supposed to. The next are I want to work on is engaging my students better. I noticed in my clinical that when I connect the lesson to real life the students all have a story to tell. It sometimes get a little of topic, but I like knowing that I can engage them by allowing them to connect to real life experiences. In the near future when I have a classroom room I will continue to work on my time management and real life connections. This will help with my classroom management and student engagement. When students are engage in what is going on I feel they are reaching their maximum learning potential on the subject being taught and they dont even realize it. I feel perfecting these two things during my teaching experiences will positively affect my students learning.