Wendy D.

Lemon
Education 316- Carney
Hibernation/Sequencing lesson
Reflection

I was uncertain as to how I would make responses for the questions that may have the answer
indicated with a head nod or thumbs-up. An example of these type of question would be; If you
believe that the dormouse n the story hibernates all winter, give me thumbs-up. If you do not believe
that the dormouse in the story hibernates all winter, show me thumbs-down. I marked these as Yes or
No questions or short answer depending on how they were phrased. I also did not mark rhetorical
questions; such as, Are we ready to continue reading? These questions were used for transition or to
guide attention back to the topic on hand.
During the story reading itself, I chose not to mark the reading as teacher or student talk. As I read,
the students would join me at the end of each page with choral reading. Only individual comments and
bantering of content was recorded. Several times I had marked teacher talk when I would reconfirm the
information the student had said to add clarification or volume for the class. I would be interested in
knowing if this is the correct procedure or not. Kindergarten often provides different forms of
communication that the upper level classes and for this reason I was unsure how to chart some of the
communication strategies I chose to use with this age group.
Overall, I felt that the questioning session was productive, but feel that I need to challenge myself to
ask more analytical and comprehensive questions. One area that was really lacking was the use of the
students names during the lesson. Part of this was due to the delay in initial field placement which had
prevented me from familiarizing myself with all the students and their names.
Since the topic of hibernation was unfamiliar to most of the students, the majority of the content was
teacher led by me as a teacher candidate. For this reason, I tried to keep the students engaged and
actively involved in the lesson through providing opportunities for participation and by providing
positive feedback. The open forum allowed the children to feel free to participate in the reading of the
story. Although this was not originally planned, based on the feedback from the students, I felt it would
help to maintain engagement and focus.
Voice levels were appropriate throughout the presentation of content and appeared to be easily
understood from various locations in the room. I do plan on focusing more on the control of the tone of
my voice and to watch for over-extension of words, especially at the end of sentences. I am also more
aware of the repeated us of the work OK and regional slurs such as yall.
The use of the Low Inference Self-Assessment Measure was beneficial in several areas. The data from
this personal assessment will be used to develop new teaching strategies and will be used as a
referencing document for future re-evaluation of my content presentation and teaching.