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Lesson Self- Assessment for ED 315

Name: Jessica Borkowski


Lesson topic: Write informative/explanatory texts to examine a topic and convey
ideas and information clearly.
Date: 10/7/14
School/grade level/ number of students: Honey Creek Elementary, 3
rd
Grade, 30
Name of Cooperating Teacher: Ms. Hagenow

Planning and preparation: Describe how your plan provided opportunities for active
engagement. How did you provide for the needs of diverse learners? Did you adjust
your plan in any way? Describe how and why if you did.

This lesson is the second lesson in a writing unit. The students were writing
informative/explanatory essays for the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. writing contest.
The theme for the contest this year was, We have a great deal of positive work to
do. During the first lesson of this unit the students read Martins Big Words and
learned about Dr. Kings life. This lesson builds on the previous lesson. During this
lesson the students did a word study of positive. The students then looked at
examples of positive work that Dr. King did. Finally, the students looked at
examples of positive work that they have done or could do.

To engage students in this lesson I first created a graphic organizer to help students
organize and record their thinking. The organizer was divided into three columns,
Positive, Martins Positive Work, and My Positive Work. As a whole group, we
went through the first two columns. I took volunteer responses from the class and
called on students to ensure that all students were participating. I also modeled
some examples to spark students thinking. For the last column, students worked
individually to record examples of their own positive work. While students worked
individually, I conferred with students to ensure they were on task and to ask
questions to deepen their thinking. At the end the lesson, I asked a few students to
share what they wrote for examples of their positive work.

I designed this lesson with a graphic organizer to help three particular students
organize their thoughts before writing their essay. In previous my previous
observations and in my discussions with my cooperating teacher, I learned that these
three students struggled with generating original ideas for their writing. I premade
the organizer for these students because they may have had difficulty creating an
organizer from scratch. I decided to provide the premade organizer to all of the
students because creating an organizer from scratch was not the main goal of this
lesson. I also taught this lesson to the whole group because I believed that all of the
students could benefit from the word study and those students who had a deeper
understanding of the material could model their thinking for other students.

I did adjust this lesson plan by excluding the timer and time limit for completing
each section. I first tried to give the students a set amount of time to complete the
first section but found that some students were stressed being under a time limit.
Some of the students were rushing to complete the work and werent thinking deeply
about what they were writing. Other students were struggling to come up with ideas
to write down. I decided to abandon the timer and time limit and proceeded with
the lesson with out it.

Classroom environment: Evaluate the ways in which your encouraged student
participation. How did you elicit student responses? How did you engage them in
responding to you and each other? Evaluate your plan for individual, small group
and/or whole class work. How effective were these different organizational
techniques for keeping students involved in your lesson?

To encourage student participation I asked for volunteers. I made note of the
students that volunteered responses and then called on students who were not
verbally participating and asked for them to share their responses. I recorded the
students responses on the Smartboard so that students could write the information
on their graphic organizers without having to worry about spelling. When calling on
students during the whole group instruction, I showed my enthusiasms for their
responses with the tone of my voice. While students worked independently, I
conferred with students and asked questions to deepen their thinking. Specifically, I
asked them why the positive work they listed was considered positive work and what
happens when they do positive work. These questions sparked new responses in the
students that they then recorded as well. I believe that these different techniques
allowed for all students to be involved in the lesson. By looking at the students
completed graphic organizers I was able to determine that all of the students were
able to generate individual and unique ideas for their essays.

Instruction: Evaluate your choices of instructional strategies. Did they have the effect
you intended? Were the needs of all learners met? What changes would you make if
you repeated this lesson?

For this lesson I first explained the purpose for the lesson. I explained that the
students would be entering the writing contest and that the theme was We have a
great deal of positive work to do. I then explained to the students that to help
them better understand the theme, as a class we were going to focus on the word
positive. Using the graphic organizer, the class created a list of words that meant
the same as positive or were words that reminded them of positive. Next, I
explained to the students that the theme of the essay is about positive work and the
positive work that Dr. King Jr. did. I also explained that to help them generate ideas
about what they would write in their essays we were going to create a list of
examples of his positive work. After this, I explained to the students that the judges
for the contest were going to also look for examples of how the students did or could
do positive work. I asked students to provided examples of how they did positive
work and how it was the same as the positive work the Dr. King Jr. did. Students
were able to generate unique, individual responses that they recorded on their
graphic organizers. Some of the students did struggle at first with generating
independent responses for examples of their own positive work. To help them
generate responses, I conferred with them individually and asked questions to help
them deepen their thinking. I asked them if helping others was an example of
positive work and then asked them to provided examples of times that they helped
others. By doing this, the students who were struggling were able to generate ideas
and record them.

If I were to repeat this lesson, I would actually change what lessons I taught before
this lesson. Previously, I had taught just one lesson to the students that provided
background information about the life of Dr. King Jr. While we read a book that
provided a lot of information about Dr. King Jr. it was only one book and there was
some important information about his life that we did not cover. If I were to repeat
this lesson, I would teach a few more lessons, using different texts, about the life of
Dr. King Jr. This would provide students with more background information about
Dr. King Jr. that they could draw upon and make connections to in their own lives.

Assessment: What assessment processes did you plan and how did they work? What
did you learn from listening to student responses, examining their work or listening to
their interactions? How well did your assessment procedures inform you about student
attainment of your lessons objectives?

This lesson is part of a large unit. For the unit, there is a formal assessment of the
students final essays. The rubric for the formal assessment was not used in this
specific lesson. I did use two informal assessments for this lesson. The first was the
graphic organizer that students recorded their responses on. This organizer showed
that all of the students were able to make at least one connection between the
positive work of Dr. King Jr. and the positive work of themselves. The second
informal assessment I did was a checklist to monitor students participation in the
class discussion. As students responded I noted who responded. I also noted if a
student responded but did not understand the topic. While students work
independently, I conferred with the students who did not have a chance to
participate in the whole class discussion. I also conferred with students who had
participated but had not grasped the concept yet. Using both of these methods of
informal assessment, I was able to determine that students were able to make
connections between Dr. King Jr. and the positive work of themselves and that they
were ready to start writing their essays.

Professional responsibilities: What did you learn from your cooperating teachers
feedback on this lesson? How will you apply it to future lessons?

My cooperating teachers feedback was to make the lists for the graphic organizers
collectively and have the students copy down 3-5 that resonate with them. The list
was extensive but it also showed the students numerous examples so that they could
find something they could personally connect with. I think in my future teaching I
may have the class work together as a whole group to generate ideas but then have
students pick the ideas/responses that means the most to them. This will still allow
for students to see the different ideas and still make the connection to themselves
without them having doing the extra work of writing down information that they will
not use.

Reflection: What did you learn about student learning and assessing from this lesson?
How will it affect your planning for future teaching?

During this lesson, I was able to practice using an informal assessment of student
participation. This was only the second time I had used an informal assessment of
student participation and it was the first time I used one during a whole group
discussion. I found it was not difficult to monitor who was participating, but I found
it difficult to make sure that I was drawing students into the discussion who were
paying attention but not responding. I think this will get better the more I practice
using this assessment and the more I monitor student participation. My goal for my
future teaching is so continue practicing using the student participation informal
assessment and drawing all of the students into the learning process.

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