Alex Burrall

TED 467
4/22/15
Lesson Reflection
Todays lesson exposed some strengths and weaknesses in my methods as classroom
teacher. Some of the strengths of this lesson included a high level of cognitive engagement from
students during the engagement and assessment pieces, the inclusion of students from all corners
of the classroom, and a structured classroom management system in the maintaining of a positive
classroom environment. Students understood the goal of the lesson and seemed to be confident
in being able to master the goal. After reading the objective, several students were eager to move
to the exit ticket as it included drawing and caption writing skills.
In the engagement, several students were eager to share out in showing they understood
how to extract the main idea from a short passage. Many hands were raised and students who
shared out were able to explain why they chose answers they chose. One weakness I noticed in
this step was when checking student journals afterschool, I noticed that the majority of students,
not all, chose an answer and explained it while 5-6 students did not explain their answers as
instructed. This exposed a shortcoming in my ability to closely monitor the progress of all
students.
During the chapter reading, it appeared as though all students were on task. I had a
student take on the role of cold caller for the class and that seemed to be effective for the student
and as a means of selecting random students for involvement across the class. However, there
was a small number of students who were unsure of how to respond to questions that were
simple checks for understanding as we read. This showed that some students were not
consistently engaged in the reading. This made me question myself as to why they werent more
engaged. Was the storyline in this chapter not interesting? Was the tone I used in the audio
recording of the chapter read too dull? Could I have asked better questions while checking for
understanding during the reading?
During the pair work activity, several students worked with partners to answer the
questions as expected. A few students needed a few reminders to stay on topic with their
discussions which was not an issue. There were, however, some students who preferred to work
individually rather than in partners and who insisted on doing the questions independently. For
these students I wondered if I could have placed them closer to a peer of whom which they
would prefer to work with. By the time I approached the individual students, all other students
were successfully making progress in the activity, so I chose to allow the individual students to
proceed in completing the activity on their own. Still I wondered if I could have done something
differently during this segment as well. Overall, I felt satisfied with the outcome of this lesson.