Department of Teacher Education & Learning Sciences

Elementary Education Program

Formal Observation Reflection

Directions: Complete the reflection questions and submit your response to your observer prior to having a post-
conference to discuss the observation. If a conference is held immediately after the observation you will submit
your responses to the observer the following day via email.

Name: Kelsey Badgett Date: 11-10-2017

1. To what extent were learning outcomes appropriate and achievable to your students?
Students were able to identify main idea and key details of a story and were able to tell
the lesson of the story. This learning goal was appropriate for a large portion of the
class, and for those students who had difficulty with it, there were several opportunities
for discussion and explanation. The learning goal of explaining and describing being
different was harder for some students. They were not able to focus on differences
besides the character in the story being different. I feel like this learning outcome was
appropriate, but would teach it different the next time to assure they achieved it.

2. How effective were your instructional strategies? What changes would you make in
your instructional approaches if you taught this lesson again? Why?
The instruction strategies planned were effective with the lesson taught. Turn and talk,
whole group questioning, class sharing time, and individual writing were included and
allowed students to stay involved in the lesson and participate. If I were to teach the
lesson again, I would try to include more engagement while the story was being read
and possibly reread the story to make sure the students did not get bored with it and
also got the lesson out of it. I would not stop and talk during the story as much if
repeated. The amount of stop and talks this past time was distracting for some.

3. Evaluate the effectiveness of your oral and written communication with students.
(Consider how well you communicated learning objectives, clarity of directions, use of standard English, quality of
questions and effectiveness of discussion techniques.)
The learning objectives were clearly communicated to the students as we had multiple
conversations about main idea, key details, and lesson learned. Directions were given
clearly and multiple times to make sure the students understood. One thing to work on
would be to give all of the directions before sending students back to their seats so
that I would not have to get their attention once they were working. Sentence starters
were used in this lesson, so the sentences and ideas that I wanted the students to
write and understand were clear to them. Also, this made sure that all students were
able to communicate what they learned. Open and closed questions were included.

4. Evaluate the level of student engagement in your lesson . (Consider how you presented the
content/skills, the activities and assignments for students, grouping of students, and structure and pacing of the
lesson.)
The whole class was engaged as the lesson started, but as the lesson progressed,
only certain students stayed engaged and answering questions. I believe the stopping
and talking during the story led to the students becoming bored with it and I would
 have been better off to let the story play all the way through after talking about it. The
stopping to ask questions was important for student learning, but not so much for
student engagement. Because of this, the pace was a little slow and some students
wondered off. In the sentence activity, I tried to wait long enough to make sure all
students had a chance to write their sentence before moving on, but this slowed the
pace down more and was not beneficial for all students.

5. How effectively did you use instructional materials, resources, and/or technology?
Instruction materials were effectively used in this lesson. The book was a clear
example of the lesson I was trying to teach. The read aloud was online and the
technology was used effectively for the read aloud section of the lesson. Also, the read
aloud was paused and talked about instead of letting it play all the way through.
Students materials were used effectively as each student was given a sheet of writing
paper to write their sentences on. The writing paper was also used as classroom
management because students had to be sitting quietly and ready in their seats before
they were given a piece of paper. The sentence starter was written on a white board
easel and put in front of the entire class so that each student could see and read the
sentences.

6. To what extent were your assessment strategies effective? What changes would you
make in your assessment approach if you taught this lesson again? Why?
The assessment strategy of having students complete the sentence starters was
effective and gave each student the opportunity to apply what they learned from the
lesson. Also, questions were asked whole class and the correct answer was talked
about while the incorrect answer was probed or given a chance to correct it. At the end
of writing sentences, students were called at random to come read one sentence and
support was given to them. This gave us opportunity to talk about the sentences.
Students were also asked to turn and tell one person at their table something that they
liked about them. I thought this was a good way to apply the lesson. If this lesson was
repeated, I would still do the sentences, but I would do it in some more engaging way,
possibly have them write their own story about being different and made sure they
were able to tell me the main idea and details of theirs. This would have the students
still thinking about the lesson, but it would be more interesting and keep the students
who had shorter attention spans involved.

7. To what extent was your feedback to students accurate, substantive, constructive,

specific, and/or timely?
When I asked a question, I incorporated in wait time before calling on students to
share with the class. I wanted to give each student the time to think about what I asked
and what they wanted to say. Once a student was called on, I would take what they
said and try to reinforce and elaborate on it before moving on to the next idea. I also
asked students to repeat what their classmates said so that the class could hear it
over and over. When a student answered and did not say what I was looking for,
instead of telling them they were wrong and telling the class the correct answer, I tried
to ask another student what they thought. The feedback I gave built them up in their
work and I gave constructive comments and motivation.
8. To what extent did the classroom management and environment contribute to student
learning? (Consider your classroom procedures, your use of physical space, and the students conduct.)
The students were attentive and responsive when the lesson started, but as the story
went on and we discussed ideas and topics from the story, some students lost
attention and got antsy. When this started happening, some students werent getting
what I was trying to teach and I drew attention back multiple times but the students
needed to be more engaged at points. The environment and the pace of the lesson led
to some students seeming like they didnt get the idea of what lesson the story taught
them. Once students returned to their seats, they were given a task and I walked
around to attend to certain students while I went over each individual sentence with
them. Most students were doing their work, but a few students let their table mates
distract them and they did not finish writing their sentences. I feel like they did not get
everything out of the lesson because of how they were distracted for part of it. This is
something that I am going to have to work on as a teacher, because I am not sure
what classroom management strategies to use when this is happening. Other than
that, the classroom management kept the students where they needed to be.

9. Did you make modifications to your lesson plan during the lesson? If so, what were
they and what motivated these changes?
The only changes I made to the lesson plan were having students come up and share
their sentences and having students turn and tell their partner something they liked
about them. I made the change of having students share their sentences because I felt
like some students were not paying attention and completing their work and I wanted
to motivate them to work on it. The idea of having students turn and talk about what
they liked about each other came to me because I wanted students to really
understand that it is okay to be different and that there are things about each other that
we like. Looking back, I should have made changes during the read aloud and turn
and talks when I realized students werent exactly getting the idea or paying attention
to the idea. I will hopefully get better at straying from my lesson when needed and
knowing what to do when I have my own class.

10. Was your Teaching Behavior Focus goal met?

The teaching behavior goal of attending to equity and differentiating for students on
different levels was met with the students who needed more help. For the students
who were struggling, there was a sentence starter and we went over what each
sentence said as a class that reached to their level. If this activity was repeated, I
would try to focus on what I could do for the students who were above level to keep
them engaged and challenged. The students who were above level in this class ended
up pushing themselves and writing more than was asked and I would need to include
this for future runs of this lesson.