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Kelsey Kinard
TWS 8: Reflection, Self-Evaluation, & Professional Development

Section 1: Whole Class

A. Based on the data analysis, the intervention had a positive impact on student learning.
At the beginning of the unit, the students had no prior knowledge of communities.
Through instruction, a majority of the students met the lesson objectives. As the
teacher, I addressed misconceptions and provided the students with feedback after
every lesson. In every lesson, the class performance improved from the pre-assessment
to the post-assessment.

B. Based on the formative assessments given throughout the unit, I decided that different
tools and strategies could be used. To keep the students engaged, I tried to include
activities such as researching communities on Google Images, watching video clips
about communities, tying in the students personal experience, creating bubble maps,
whole group discussions, using turn and talk points for the students to exchange ideas
with their peers, and creating Are, Can, Have charts to the unit. Implementing the
various strategies had a positive impact on the classes learning. After I reviewed the
post-assessment journal entries, I observed that the students were not having trouble
with the content but were having trouble forming sentences. A modification that
should have been implemented in the unit sooner would be to provide sentence
prompts as needed.

C. In order to promote greater student learning the next time the unit is taught, I will
implement more collaborative learning groups and hands-on/interactive activities. The
lessons did not provide much opportunity for the students to actively research and
learn.

Section 2: Three Individual Students

A. Student # 21 was the most successful throughout the unit. This student is a Caucasian
female from an educated and wealthy home. Her family is prominent in the community
and her mother is actively involved in school functions. This student is also an advanced
reader and displays good critical thinking skills across all subject areas. The assessments
show that this student learned during the unit, but she was not appropriately
challenged. She was always the first to finish her journal entry and had to sit and wait
on her classmates. To avoid this in the future, there can be an activity for early finishers
to work on independently until their classmates are done.

B. Student # 22 was the least successful student throughout the unit. This student is a
Caucasian male from an involved family. This student exhibits extreme behavioral and
emotional issues that completely enable him to function academically. Misbehavior and
irrational outbreaks prohibited this student from meeting objectives throughout the
unit. He is an incredibly intelligent student, but was unsuccessful due to circumstances
out of anyones control.

C. Student # 9 was about average in performance throughout the unit. This student is an
African American female. She is on grade-level academically and receives her only
academic support at school. She is one child of a family with multiple children. Her
family has always been in Greenwood and she does not have any knowledge of places
outside of her own town. It took her a while to grasp the concept of different types of
communities. To better improve performance from students like her in the future, I
would incorporate some learning activities that introduces and/or familiarizes the
students with different places outside of Greenwood. This way they have some
knowledge on which to build the concept of different communities around.

Section 3: Reflection on additional 2-4 lessons

Lesson Reflection 1
The math lesson was taught as a whole group. The students participated throughout
the lesson and most completed the worksheet accurately. There were side conversations that
took place during the lesson. Most students did well staying on task the entire time, but there
were some who talked and were inattentive. This could be the result of my teaching not
grabbing their attention, them not grasping the lesson, or just regular behavioral issues. Based
on my reflection of the lesson, I realize that I need to know the information I am teaching and
be prepared to explain the same concept in multiple ways for the different learners. I also need
to be conscious of the words I use to during instruction. There were times during the lesson
that I saw a better way to work through the steps of the problem and would change the process
or I would change my verbiage. I realize that this could cause some confusion for the students.
In regards to the side conversations and the blurting out, we are currently working on
correcting those in the classroom. These students are very talkative and impulsive. I am trying
different techniques in order to control this issue.
Lesson Reflection 2
I continued on with day two of our Social Science unit on communities. That day we
were learning about urban communities. With the class, I looked up urban communities on
Google Images and lead a whole group discussion on aspects of urban communities. The
students and I created a bubble map based on the whole group discussion and what was
observed in the images of urban communities. The students then created a journal entry in
their Discovery Journals which included a sentence about urban communities and an
illustration. The students showed interest in the whole group discussion topic and were able to
share their own observations, relate the information to personal experiences, and use
technology (Google images on the SMARTboard) for learning. In first grade at Lakeview
Elementary, Social Science lessons utilize journaling as a main source of learning and assessing.
Therefore, a major part of the lesson was spent writing and drawing in their Discovery Journals.

As far as the instruction goes, there were lulls in the lesson as I called on students to make
observations about urban communities. These lulls left room for the students to blurt out. In
future lessons, I will keep my own dialogue going with the students to eliminate side
conversations and also I will know more about the topic I am teaching in order to make the
information challenging and developmentally appropriate.

Section 4: Reflection for Professional Development

Two goals I wish to works towards as a professional teacher are time management and
assessments of learning. Some of my lessons took longer than allotted for in my lesson plan.
This meant that my lesson ran over into the time designated for other subjects or activities.
During my student teaching experience, I was able to practice time management and by the
end I was able stay on schedule for the most part. This is still an area I struggle with though and
would like to better my instruction by mastering. One step towards this goal will be to practice
my lesson before I teach it. If I time myself presenting the lesson, I will have an accurate
estimation for how much time I actually have to complete each portion of the lesson. Another
step would be to implement procedures for those little things that seem to steal so much
lesson time when combined. The other would be to use better means of assessments for my
lessons. I want to be able to accurately assess my students learning. I have difficulty
measuring the students progress from the pre-assessment to the post assessment because the
two did not always line up. One step towards achieving my goal will be to really think about my
assessments beforehand. I need to think: will this accurately show me what my student
knows, what will keep my student from being able to complete this assessment, does it give me
enough information to determine comprehension, and do my pre-assessment and post
assessment line up. Another step will be to get other professionals opinions. It is important
and helpful to go to other professionals teaching the same content and get their opinions or
their methods for assessments.