Level 3 Supervisor Observation Reflection #1

The Reflection: The reflection component should make you think about your overall impressions and feelings that you had. You also might address something that surprised you or something that made you pause.

Questions to consider in your reflection:

1. What aspects of your lesson were implemented differently than you planned? Why did that happen? One aspect of my lesson that was implemented differently than I planned was the formation of the groups. I preplanned ahead of time to group students based on academic levels so they could help each other. The ESE teacher was busy with testing this day so she did not come pull her usual small group for the math block. I had to improvise a little bit before the lesson and adjust the groups to fit the needs of those learners.

2. If you were going to teach this lesson to the same group of students, what would you do differently? Why? What would you do the same? Why? If I were to teach this lesson again to the same group of students, I would go over more strategies for solving and eliminate the problems on the review that did not have a space to show their work. I would do this because it is important for the students to show their work, and on some of the problems, it asked for a single answer. I would keep the group setups the same because the students worked well together, and I feel they benefitted more with working with those students. I would also keep the same higher order questions that I prompted the students with in the beginning part when I had students on the carpet. My prompting questions pushed students into explaining further into why they know. This connects to FEAP 3 f. (employs higher-order- questioning techniques) because I was able to use these questions to further my students learning.

3. What surprised you in your lesson? One thing that surprised me was how well they worked together. We have a lot of different behaviors in my class, so the fact they were able to collaborate and discuss together was important.

4. Describe an instance or particular encounter that comes to mind. Why did you pick that instance? What is so perplexing about that particular moment? One instance that comes to mind is at 16:30, when a student answered a problem correctly and showed his work, yet he wasn’t discussing with his team members. His team members had a completely different answer than him, so I asked why he was not participating. With my verbal signal, he was able to jump back into discussion and state his opinion to the group. The others listening attentively to him and considered what he was saying and then adjusted their work. This is interesting to me because a lot goes unnoticed when teachers cannot see. If I had not prompted that student, he would have missed a perfect opportunity to collaborate and help his peers.

The Analysis: The analysis part addresses the lesson’s effectiveness – to what extent did the students meet the objectives stated in your lesson plan and how do you know? Make a claim about student learning and support it with evidence that you gathered from the lesson.

Questions to consider specific to differentiated instruction:

1. What specific differentiated instruction strategies and assessments are used in this lesson? Be specific. At 12:16, I dismissed the students into their groups for the activity. I had specific differentiated instruction strategies in my lesson because I grouped students based on ability. I had my tier 3 students with my CT and I grouped my tier 1 and 2 students mixed to get a variety of abilities in each group. This impacted student learning because students were able to hear different opinions on strategies and collaborated with different ability levels. My informal data collection I took from my observations when I walked around helped me see this. My tier 3 group also had that extra assistance needed from my CT to help their learning. My CT's informal data collection from her observations and from working with them helped me see this as well.

2. Describe how you assessed how the lesson impacted student learning? What worked? What would you change? I assessed how the lesson impacted student learning with my self-assessment the students worked on at the very end. I remind the students every time we complete a self-assessment that it should be completed honest to reflect their learning and their growth. I was able to compare student learning from that self-assessment after the review lesson to the self-assessment completed from the previous teaching day. Most students wrote that they felt more confident in their learning after they worked in groups and completed the review. This shows me that student learning was positively affected with this review.

4. Identify an individual or group of students who did especially well in this lesson today. How do you account for this performance? My tier 3 group that worked with my CT did especially well in the lesson. I accounted for this performance because I could hear a lot of good conversations from my observations and my CT took informal notes how well they were doing in the small group.

5. If you were going to teach this lesson again to the same group of students, what would you do differently? (Consider: grouping, methods, materials, evaluation, activities) Why? What would you do the same? Why? One thing I could have changed to differentiate for enrichment would be for students to justify their thinking. Using this kind of prompting questions is a higher-level question compared to the questions on the review. I started strong with asking students to explain how and why they know, but it would have been more helpful to continue on with having more prepared questions similar to the ones I asked already on the review itself. If I did add them, students would have to find the answer, use a strategy, and then write or verbally explain how their strategy worked best for them.

Questions to consider specific to a mathematics lesson:

2. Consider your mathematical explanations.

1. Did you support student accuracy (in other words, did you correctly identify student work as accurate or inaccurate)? This does not mean that you necessarily told a student they were wrong, but that you recognized their lack of accuracy and took steps to support their further learning. At 34:20 in my lesson, a group answered the question wrong. Instead of telling the group of students that their answer was wrong and moving on, I prompted the students by asking them how they got their answer. When they discussed out loud their thinking, I was able to recognize their lack of understanding and support their learning by addressing the misconception. This aligns with FEAP 3 i. (to support, encourage, and provide immediate specific feedback to students to promote student achievement) because I was able to provide immediate specific feedback to those students to support their student learning and achievement.

Lesson Plan: