Supervisor Observation 1. Post Reflection

mmaloni
Feb 8, 2018
3 min read

Reflection:

Looking back at my lesson, the students seemed to be very engaged and wanted to participate. The lesson was having the students investigate the different types of properties of minerals. The lesson was very hands-on for the students. If I were going to teach this lesson to the same group of students, the thing that I would do differently is have the students test the property hardness on their own. Looking back at my video at 10 minutes and 34 seconds I noticed that when I was the one holding the nail and showing a group of students how to test hardness they weren’t getting the same effect as if they would have if they did it on their own. Also, some groups were testing luster for the properties of minerals and the light had to be off so that they could use a flashlight and looking back at my video I noticed that it was hard for some students to see what they were looking for while testing their minerals. So, I would need to come up with a solution where the lights stay on, but luster could still be tested in the other groups. The thing that I would do the same is have the students work in groups while testing the properties of minerals. I would keep that the same because during my video at 16 minutes and 10 seconds I could hear a discussion between one group about the data they were collecting. It is very important that students question things and talk to their peers because it helps them remember things that they learned. A claim I would make about my teaching practice based on what I just mentioned it that it is important to have lessons more student lend than teacher lend because it benefits the student learning.

What surprised me the most about this lesson is how smoothly it went. There was a lot of things going on during this lesson because four groups of students were testing different properties and there was a lot of materials out. In my video at 15 minutes and 13 seconds I noticed how well the students transitioned from testing one property to another and how well they passed their materials to the next group. There was no bickering or fighting about who was passing the materials or were to pass them. I think that this lesson went smoothly because I made clear from the very beginning what was expected from the students and how the investigation was going to work. It is important with my teaching practice that the rules and procedures are clear from the start of any lesson to have it go as smooth as possible.

Analysis:

There were four groups of students working together during this lesson. One group did especially well with the lesson and that was group number three. Another teaching practice claim that I think is very important is that just observing the students is very informational. Looking back at my video at 17 minutes and 43 seconds I noticed that I am just observing a group of students. The group is having good discussions and working together to fill in their chart correctly. I accounted for their performance by looking at all the students’ chart that they were working on and noticing that group three’s chart was the most accurate with the information that was listed.

Practicing good teaching always helps when the teacher looks back at the overall lesson and figuring at their next steps to benefit their students. Based on what happened in this lesson, my next steps are to look at the students’ charts and see what property of minerals most of the students were struggling with. I plan to teach the 3 types rocks and the rock cycle next because it connects to minerals. I plan to use information from this evaluation in future lesson planning by answering these questions first and seeing how it might change my lesson for the better.