Professional Reflection: Improving Student Learning

Professional Reflection:

As a result of the lesson taught, the teacher candidate should thoroughly reflect on:
• whether all students’ needs were met, and how you collected the data for the written objective for this lesson to support your conclusions;
• whether supplementary instruction was effective and for whom;
• specific strengths and weaknesses of your teaching and student learning outcomes; and
• goals for future planning and instruction that are based on an analysis of the student assessment data.
• plans to increase student learning, especially in lower performing students.
InTASC 9

Overall I am very satisfied with the flow and results of the lesson: students were engaged throughout the lesson and enjoyed the activities; graphic organizer and visuals of the lesson helped with the comprehension of the content. The three steps of the Instructional Strategies have helped to organize the material into three logical milestones:
I DO – direct Instruction (students had to listen and comprehend the content of the lesson)
We DO – scaffolding (students had an opportunity to receive guided practice)
You Do – assessment of knowledge (students had a chance to show what they have learned on their own).
The average assessment grade was 85 with no outliers, which means the needs of all students were met and nobody was left behind. I was glad extra instructions were included in the plan for the advanced students, because, as it was expected, they had competed their work before time and were happy to receive an extra challenge.
Another effective tool was the graphic organizer. Once student under IEP plan had received graphic organizer visual, it definitely made him more comfortable to follow the lesson. The undeniable proof of that was the fact that he engaged in the discussion and answered a question.
I find that there were few strong elements to my teaching, such as:
- the knowledge of content;
- the communication with
students;
- ability to engage all the students;
- the lesson was active, entertaining and productive.
The main weakness was the chosen reward system. Although “Carolina BUCKs” was quite a success within the students, it was an obvious extrinsic reward and not intrinsic, which wouldn’t be possible to be repeated on the regular bases for financial reasons and wouldn’t be beneficial to students in the future.
“Carolina BUCKs” strategy was the one part of the lesson I would change to gain a complete students’ focus without any distractions and accomplish more fundamental goals, such as helping our students to become responsible for their own education. As far as the rest the goals, I would try to include more practical situations to deepen students’ understanding of the subject.
Plans to increase lower performing students’ learning would be the use of the following strategies: consistent checking, more scaffolding, and effective questioning not just the whole group, but these students directly during the small group activities.