Allyson Conner
3/31/2021
ELIS 3703
Lesson Week Reflection
The entire class consisted of 17 students. 13 out of 17 students were able to complete all
6 math problems correctly which resulted in 76.5% of the class. 4 out of 17 students were not
able to complete all 6 math problems correctly. These students completed all of the problems but
they did not do some of them correctly. I would use these results the next day to drive my
instruction because I would try to get all 17 students to answer math problems correctly. 23.5%
is a big percent and I don’t like the fact that 23.5% of the class doesn’t know how or can’t
complete all 6 math problems correctly. I would also use these results to focus more on the
23.5% or the 4 students who did not complete all 6 math problems correctly. I would check their
errors and make sure that they understand what they did wrong so that they wouldn’t make those
mistakes again. If they are not understanding the material at all I would take the time to go over
adding and subtracting double digit problems in little conferences so that they have better
understanding so that when they go to do a different set of problems they will be successful. In
an article written about student understanding it states, “Teacher judgement is an important tool
when identifying whether students are making mistakes or errors. When looking at answers from
a quiz or test, teachers often know students well enough to be able to identify if they should or
should not have known an answer. Performing 1:2:1 conferencing with a student will allow you
to go through questions, allowing the student to explain their answers and sometimes identifying
their own mistakes (Best, 2020).” After I made sure that the students have a better understanding
of what they did wrong and a better understanding of the material I would have the whole class
do another set of 6 problems. This would allow the 4 students who did not complete all of the 6
problems correctly a chance to solve all 6 problems correctly and this would also allow the
students who got them all right extra practice. When looking at these results, I did not expect
them. I was expecting all students to be able to complete all 6 math problems correctly because
this was more of a review so I thought they would be able to complete this with no problem so it
was a shock to me that students missed problems.
The entire class consisted of 17 students. 88.2% of students, which was 15 out of 17
students were able to have at least 2 things that describe bones and things that bones can do.
11.8% of students, which was only 2 students, did not turn in the assignment. When looking at
just the students who turned in the assessment, 100% of the students were able to have at least 2
things that bones are or things that bones can do. This was a huge success. The students who are
at lower levels were able to complete this successfully. When looking back at their assessments
they provided 2 things and not any more which is totally acceptable. The higher level students
however were able to provide a lot more than 2 things. I was really proud of all of the students
because they were all able to complete this assessment successfully. This also showed me that
they were learning something and that they were understanding the material. Since 100% of the
students who actually turned in the assessment were able to complete it successfully, I will use
this data to drive future instruction by building on their understanding. All of the students were
able to write down two things that bones are, for example, bones are strong. They were also able
to write down things that bones can do, for example, bones help me walk. Since they were able
to do this, for future instruction, I will elaborate on the functions of bones and have a little more
in depth lessons about bones so that they can build their understanding of bones. Since bones are
a thing that we all have, I would also connect the more in depth lesson about bones to real life
things because bones are real life. Edutopia states, “Connecting the assignment to real-world
activities reinforced the reasoning for the assignment. Thinking about real-world implications
can lead to deeper comprehension (Mattox, 2019).” Before I taught this lesson I was not
anticipating it going as well as it did. With that being said, I did not expect these results at all.
With having the opportunity to work with and observe the lower level students, especially the
ones that I observed, I knew that sometimes they struggle with writing prompts and sometimes
they are not able to complete it successfully. So I was expecting them to write 1 thing about
bones or write something that is completely off so when I got these results and every student was
able to complete the assessment successfully I was shocked and so happy.
The class consisted of 17 students. 11 students out of 17, which is 64.7% of the class,
were able to have at least 2 actions that Duncan can take to make the crayons feel better and
words or phrases that indicate feeling. 6 students out of 17, which is 35.3% of the class were not
able to complete this. The students who were not able to complete this only gave 1 action. Since
a bigger percentage of students, compared to other graphs, were not able to complete this I would
use these results to go over the next day what actions are specifically and examples of them in
different contexts. I would also specifically give examples of words that indicate feeling so
students know what those look like and how you would use them in a sentence. If I did this then
the students who were not able to complete this would be able to understand what actions are and
how to use them in a writing and then the students who were able to complete this would just
further their understanding of actions and words or phrases that indicate feeling. When teaching
these actions or words and phrases that indicate feeling I would make sure to give the students
repeated exposure to them following this lesson. In an article written about vocabulary, Emily
Stewart, [Link], says “We find that through incremental, repeated exposure in a variety of
contexts to the words they are trying to learn, we have an opportunity to create a new dimension
of word ownership for our kiddos … the key words being "repeated exposure." When we are
giving students multiple opportunities for exposure to vocabulary words two things should come
to mind: the types of words we are teaching and how we are teaching them (Stewart, 2012).”
Going into this lesson, I was not as confident in it as I was in other lessons so I did expect these
results. I figured that some students were going to struggle because teaching about actions that
someone can do to make someone feel better and words or phrases that indicate feeling in one
day would be a little difficult for first graders. When I was explaining the instructions to the
assessment I was getting a lot of questions so these results did not surprise me.
When looking back at the feedback that I provided to the whole class and the two
students that I observed I do not think that it effectively provided them with insight into their
learning about the content. I think that the feedback that I provided was just surface level about
the content so if I were to do this lesson again I would definitely be more intentional and specific
with the feedback that I was giving. I would also make sure that the students that I observed were
provided with constant verbal feedback, more than I was already giving. I think in order for the
feedback to be effective in providing them insight into their learning about the content it needs to
be more than one day for just 30 minutes. For lesson week we obviously only had to teach three
days and each of our lessons were around 30-45 minutes so it would be really hard to provide
them with constant verbal feedback about the content we were teaching in. So to learn from this,
during our unit week I will make sure to provide the students with genuine and specific feedback
constantly through the lessons and also remind them of this feedback in other days of the content
lesson. For my lesson week lessons it was hard to help students use the feedback that I was
giving because the lessons were only one day and it was only 30-45 minutes and then the lesson
was over. So in future lessons I will help students use feedback by verbally reminding them of
the feedback. Since the two students that I observed would benefit from constant verbal
feedback, I will say things such as “remember the feedback that I said to you yesterday” or
something along those lines. If students don’t remember then I would remind them specifically
of what feedback I gave them. For the rest of the students who can benefit from the written
feedback one thing that I can do is tape little note cards onto their plexiglass barriers that have
the feedback on them so for future lessons they can look right in the corner of the plexiglass and
be reminded of the feedback. The benefit of this is that it can be specific to each kid and what
they are doing good and what they might need to work on because every student is different.
Another way that I thought of to help students use the feedback is to have a “feedback corner” in
my class. This corner can have a picture of me or the teacher pointing at the students with a little
speech bubble saying “Here is the feedback” and around the picture of me or a teacher can be
encouraging general feedback or general feedback about the contents that every student should
know but might need reminded of. For example, little note cards can say “Great job!” “You are
doing great!” or it can say “Don’t forget your spaces!” “Remember to capitalize!” These are
examples of feedback that students should be reminded of in daily spaces so it would help
students to have this because they could look at this corner everyday and would be able to use
that feedback because it is around them everyday.
The first thing that I learned about teaching and learning related to assessment is that
there are multiple forms of formative assessments that can be done in a classroom to get a better
understanding of a student's learning. Edutpoia says “Formative assessment can be as simple as
thumbs up or down and as creative as having students illustrate a page of a story (Wees, 2012.)”
Formative assessments can be super simple and they could also be more complex and that is the
beauty of formative assessments because there are so many forms. Some examples of things that
you can do as formative assessments are exit slips, drawing pictures of what they understand,
creating a poster or collage, quizzes, putting a thumb up or down, google forms, talking to each
other, and partner quizzes. There are a ton of other examples but there are just a few. Another
thing that I learned is that assessments have to be differentiated. When an assessment is
differentiated it means that “teachers modify and match assessment with the varied
characteristics/profiles of students in order to meet the students’ individual needs, thereby
enhancing their learning and boosting their ability to show what they have learned (Reflections,
Insights, and Realizations, 2015.)” It is important that as teachers we have differentiated
assessments so that we can cater to the different needs of each of our students because every
student is different and every student does not learn the same way. Before this class I did not
know much about rubrics in general let alone child-friendly ones. Growing up through school I
never had child-friendly rubrics that I would use. The only knowledge of rubrics that I have is
the ones in high school and college that are super detailed. Rubrics are used to help students
understand what is expected of them when completing an assignment. Oftentimes I will get
confused reading a rubric so I can only imagine how a child feels. I love the idea of creating
child-friendly rubrics for students to use because when they use these they understand what they
need to do in order to be successful. Going off of this I learned that you can create these child-
friendly rubrics with your students. I really am intrigued with this fact and will definitely
implement it into my own classroom. Smekens Education says “Often teachers make a rubric on
their own and then “go over” it with the kids. With this approach, students have very little
ownership and may not even understand some of the language within the rubric (n.a., 2019).”
One last thing that I learned is that feedback needs to make sense to the kids. This seems like
such a simple thing to know but often we will give feedback in language that we understand
because we are writing them and don’t realize that the students won’t know what you are talking
about. When feedback is given in language that students don’t understand then more likely than
not they will just throw whatever the feedback is provided on away. So if we want students to
learn and use the feedback that we give then it needs to be in child-friendly language.
The first thing that I would do differently is amend the feedback that I gave the
students. I would change what I wrote on their assessments to encourage them but also things
that they could work on and use in later lessons. On a lot of the assessments I would write
“fantastic” or “good job” and if I could do it differently I would say those things but also add
“remember capital letters” or the correct spellings of the words that they might have tried to
spell. The next thing that I would do differently is to have an easier assessment for my ELA/SS
lesson. I think a lot of students were confused by the assessment and the directions so I would
either come up with an easier assessment or a wording of the directions that made sense to all of
the kids. I would do this so that more students can be successful in the assessment. Even the
students who completed the assessment successfully were asking a lot of questions so that is
another reason why I would change that. Another thing that I would also change is the timing of
my ELA/SS lesson. I ended up running out of time in this lesson so students weren’t able to fully
work on one of the activities that I had and I wish that they were able to. This also goes for my
math lesson too. I did my math lesson at the end of the day and it felt super rushed towards the
end so I would definitely time my lesson out differently. Overall, I think that my lesson week
went really well and it definitely went a lot better than I anticipated in my head so I am thankful
for that. I will also take into consideration all of the things that I would do differently and
implement those into future lessons.
References
Build Kid-Friendly Writing Rubrics. Smekens Education Solutions, Inc. (2021, March 2).
[Link]
Mattox, J. (2019, December 5). Easy Ways to Build Metacognitive Skills. Edutopia.
[Link]
Published by daizeabdao
View all posts by daizeabdao, daizeabdao, P. by, Daizeabdao, &
daizeabdao, V. all posts by. (2015, July 22). Differentiated Assessment. Principles
and Methods of Assessment.
[Link]
Strategies to check for student understanding. (2021, January 11).
[Link]
Submitted by josephine raga (not verified) on June 13, Submitted by Anonymous (not
verified) on March 6, & Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on February 23.
(2020, October 16). Vocabulary: explicit vs. implicit. Reading Rockets.
[Link]
explicit-vs-implicit.
Wees, D. (2012, December 10). 56 Examples of Formative Assessment. Edutopia.
[Link]