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Alyssa Carmona
Dr. Jade Burris
EGP 322-03
18 November 2015
Activity Plan #2 Reflection

My second activity plan (The Busy Little Squirrel: Predictions, Matching, and Memory)

was implemented on Wednesday, November 11, 2015 at 10:30 AM. In order to initially and

briefly prepare Arabella for the activity, I talked to her about it on Monday, November 9th. I

called her attention back to the first activity that I had carried out with her this semester (Monkey

Math), and told her that the next time I came to visit we were going to get to read another story

and play a new game. Although I did not go into any specific details regarding the activity,

Arabella displayed much interest and enthusiasm over the idea that we would get to engage in

another special activity together. Being that she enjoyed taking part in the first activity that I

created and carried out with her this semester, I definitely think that her curiosity and excitement

were intensified for the second one. In order to engage her interest on the day of implementation,

I asked her if she would like to do the activity that I originally told her about on Monday. At this

point in time, she responded affirmatively with excitement, and offered a suggestion: Lets do it

in the quiet area! Upon this, Arabella and I headed over to the quiet reading area and I began

carrying out my activity.

I started out by telling Arabella that we were going to read a story and then play a game

together. I then began carrying out my anticipatory set by pointing to the squirrel on the cover of

the book and asking, Do you know what animal this is? She responded accurately, and I told

her that she was correct. I then asked her if she had ever seen a real squirrel, to which she

responded that she had: Ive seen one climbing on the fence in my backyard! At this point in

time, I was ready to expand on this statement by talking more about the fact that squirrels can
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climb, jump, and hang onto things, in addition to the fact that, unlike people, they do not have

eyes on the front of their head. Rather, they have eyes on the sides of their head, allowing them

to see all around them. Furthermore, I was prepared to mention the fact that they collect food

before winter so that they can still eat once winter arrives, and briefly connect this statement to

the actions of the squirrel in the story. However, upon a brief pause, Arabella then exclaimed,

And Ive also seen Daddy shoot a squirrel before! I have to admit that this definitely threw me

off a little! I know that preparing yourself to expect the unexpected is useful when planning to

carry out a lesson, but this is something that can be really hard to do! As I prepared for my

lesson, I mostly focused on things that might not go as planned as far as my actual written

lesson/instructional techniques and strategies. Thus, this was a response that I was unprepared

for, as it was something that never even crossed my mind as I was preparing for my lesson.

Because I was unsure about how to respond, I wound up bypassing the rest of my

anticipatory set, and just moved into the portion of my activity that involved reading the actual

book. Looking back on this moment, however, I wish that I had been able to remain calm and

still carry out the remainder of my planned anticipatory set. Although I do not think that my

activity plan was compromised to an extreme extent because of this, I do think that fully carrying

out the entire anticipatory set would have been more beneficial to the activity as a whole.

Overall, my activity went as planned, but this was one area in which it didnt.

As far as Arabellas interest in the activity, she remained engaged and actively

participated throughout. After reading the book (and before we began playing the game), she also

expressed to me that she wanted to read the book again once we finished playing the game. In

addition to this, once we eventually finished the matching and memory portions of the activity,

she told me that once we finished reading the book again, she also wanted to play the game
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again. Thus, I believe that the activity as a whole was received well by Arabella, and this is

something that I was extremely happy about.

Also regarding whether or not my activity went as planned, another part that did not

completely go as planned was the prediction portion. The reason it did not go as planned,

however, was because my expectations for Arabellas predictions did not match up with what

she actually predicted during the activity. Thus, the reason it did not go as planned was because

of my expectations, not because of something actually going wrong.

In preparation for carrying out my activity, I had expected that Arabella would have

picked up on the repetitive text of the story in order to come up with accurate predictions.

However, when asking her to make predictions during the story, she seemed to make predictions

based solely on the storys illustrations. For instance, she predicted that the berries that Squirrel

was trying to get might fall into the water. She also made a similar prediction about food falling

at another point in the story later on. This had been a little bit of a challenge for me, because it

was something that I did not fully prepare myself for. I will also note that during the preparation

phase of my activity while I had assumed that Arabella was going be able to make accurate

predictions I did take time to think about what I would do if she was unable to offer a

prediction at all. If this had been the case, I would have offered additional support by either

modeling prediction and/or calling her attention back to the events that took place previously.

However, because she did offer predictions, but they were predictions that were not really

addressed within the storys text, I was unsure about how I should react.

In my written plan, I made a note that during the last opportunity for prediction, it was

not expected that the child (Arabella) would be able to predict the change in text. This note,

however, was made under my assumption that she was originally going to make accurate
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predictions. Also in my written plan, however, I made a note that it would be more important for

the child to employ and develop their predictions skills than it would be for him/her to make

completely accurate predictions. This is something that I still regard as being true. Thus, I do not

necessarily think that I should have been as worried about the fact that Arabella was not making

the predictions that I expected her to be able to make. Rather, I think that it would have been

more helpful for me to focus on the fact that she was using the storys illustrations in order to

formulate a prediction. The thing that still concerns me about this, though, is the fact that the

predictions she came up with were neither confirmed nor denied within the story, or the storys

illustrations. So, the evaluation portion of making predictions in such an instance is still a minor

concern of mine.

At one point during the evaluation of one of her predictions, she told me that her

prediction was correct, when, in fact, her prediction had not been confirmed nor denied. Being

that she made a prediction based on something that was not directly addressed within or by the

story, I was again unsure about how to respond to her belief that her prediction was correct. Due

to this, in the moment, I kind of just moved right along. Looking back, however, I think it would

have been better for me to have asked her why she thought this/how she knew.

Due to the fact that I created and went into the activity plan with expectations already in

mind, I do think that my assessment for my first behavioral objective (While listening to The

Busy Little Squirrel, the child will verbally predict what happens next in the story and decide if

their predictions were confirmed every time he/she is prompted by the teacher.) was not as good

as it could have been. For instance, I think that an important component that could have been

added to this objective would have been the childs ability to accurately evaluate whether or not

his/her predictions were correct. If this had been the case, perhaps I would have been able to
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more readily recognize the fact that there was nothing wrong with Arabellas predictions they

were just not what I had originally expected them to be. While she did not offer the predictions

that I had expected her to make, she was still able to use information (illustrations) from the story

in order to make predictions. She was not, however, really able to accurately evaluate her

predictions once made. Therefore, I also think that making this minor change (adding an

evaluation accuracy component) would have allowed me to focus more on her skills in relation

to evaluating predictions once they have been made. Based on her performance during the

activity, I would say that her prediction skills are more advanced than her evaluation skills. Thus,

I found it hard to score Arabella on this objective in relation to my original rubric, and I think

that splitting up the two skills involved in this single objective would have helped. Thus,

although my assessment matched my behavioral objectives, it was not entirely effective in

providing me with the information that I needed in order to assess Arabella in regards to the first

objective.

Regarding Arabellas ability to meet the second behavioral objective (After listening to

The Busy Little Squirrel, the child will identify which character from the story (animal) goes with

each event (action/item) every time he/she is prompted by the teacher.), I would say that she met

the objective in whole. In relation to the rubric, I would have scored her as proficient, being that

she was able to Identify all (7) correct character-event matches when prompted. While she did

make one initial mistake (she paired Owl with the tree branch), she was able to identify and

correct this mistake. Once she chose Owl as the character that asked Squirrel to rest on a tree

branch, I asked her if that was what Owl asked Squirrel to do. Upon this, she told me No. I

then asked her if she remembered what Owl did ask Squirrel to do in the story, to which she

replied, Watch the moon. Upon this, I had her find the picture on the chart that Owl would go
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with, and she made that correct match (she placed Owl next to the picture of the moon with

stars). I then went back to the question relating to which character asked Squirrel to rest on a tree

branch. At this point in time, she selected Bird, making the correct match.

Also regarding the portion of my activity that dealt with the second behavioral objective,

I will say that when placing the character cards on the chart, Arabella placed them sideways.

When she first did this, my knee-jerk reaction was to either fix the card in order to have it face

the correct way, or encourage her to do so. However, I quickly decided to refrain from doing

this, as I did not think that it was necessary. I did not think that this factor was pertinent to the

purpose of activity, and I did not want to create the sense that she had did something wrong.

As a result, in looking back on this moment, I am happy with the choice that I decided to make.

Moving on to the last behavioral objective addressed in my activity plan (After matching

each character from the story (animal) with the correct event (action/item), the child will use this

information to engage in a Memory game and find all 7 of the correct character-event pairs.),

Arabella was able to meet it in whole. In regards to the rubric, I would rate her as exemplary,

being that she was able to identify the correct character-event pairs without really referring back

to the previously completed chart.

I believe that this activity challenged Arabellas emerging skills, because as with my

first activity plan it required her to use some skills that I had seen her use either intermittently

or not at all. For instance, via informally reading books to her, there had been times that I tried to

encourage the use of prediction, but did not really do so in a planned manner. In addition, a

number of the times that I had encouraged her to make predictions, it had been with a story that I

knew she was familiar with. Thus, this may have been more closely related to recall, rather than

to prediction. However, this is still fitting, being that the activity I created also involved the use
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of recalling information from a story. In order to challenge her emerging skills, I selected a book

that I thought contained a relatively predictable text, and (as far as I knew) was unfamiliar to her.

This, I also thought, would allow me to obtain a more accurate measure of her prediction and

recall abilities.

In order to ensure that my activity provided Arabella with an opportunity for success, one

of the main things that I tried to do was think of ways that I would be able to offer additional

support and guidance throughout the course of the activity. I also did this by incorporating

components that I thought Arabella would find favorable, as well components that I knew were

somewhat familiar to her. For instance, during my first activity plan, Arabella really seemed to

enjoy the fact that she got to play with and move around different manipulatives (in order to

represent ideas from a story). Thus, I tried to come up with an activity component that would

allow me to incorporate this in some way. This is where the idea for the character-event chart

originated. In addition, during the week of Halloween, my cooperating teacher had a Halloween-

themed Memory game for the children to play, and Arabella was eager to engage in that activity.

Therefore, by incorporating a version of Memory, I was able to include another thing that I was

fairly certain she would enjoy.

As far as my teaching skills are concerned, I feel that I did fairly well overall. I will say,

however, that I am definitely able to recognize a number of areas in which I could have

improved. For instance, although I put a large amount of effort into planning, there were certain

things that I could have done while planning in order to make my actual activity more successful

(i.e. putting more thought into the prediction/evaluation aspect). Another thing that I would like

to mention in regards to my teaching skills is that I know they will improve as I receive more

opportunities to employ them. As I mentioned in my reflection for my first activity plan, I

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believe that practice makes (almost) perfect. And, while I believe that this is true for teaching in

general, I also find it to be true as far as carrying out a specific activity is concerned. This is

something that I have come to find out for myself via past field experiences, but this is also

something that was confirmed for me yet again after I carried out this particular activity.

Once I had finished carrying out my activity with Arabella, not only did she want to

engage in the activity once again for herself, but some of the other children also began

expressing interest in taking part in the activity. Thus, I was able to receive several opportunities

to practice carrying out the same activity. In doing so, I felt that I was able to improve with each

successive attempt that I made. I think that this stemmed not only from the fact that I felt more

and more confident in my own abilities as time went on, but also from the fact that I began using

the knowledge that I gained each time I carried out the activity in order to modify the way in

which I carried it out the next time. I think that this is an extremely important part of teaching

being able to reflect on and use past occurrences in order to modify and carry out future

occurrences. For this reason, I am very happy with the fact that I was able to detect noticeable

differences in my abilities to successfully carry out the activity each time I received a new

opportunity to do so.

Regarding this activity in particular, there are several things that I would do differently

next time. For one, I would modify my first objective and corresponding assessment, in order to

more successfully address the skills of prediction and evaluation. In addition to this, another

thing that I would make more of a conscientious effort to do would be to refrain from making

assumptions about the child(ren)s abilities during the planning portion of the activity. As

mentioned previously, this is one thing that I can recognize I did when planning to carry out this

activity with Arabella. As a result, I feel as though my preparation was limited, because (as
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addressed earlier) I did not spend as much time preparing for the things that I did not expect to

happen (i.e. during the prediction portion of the activity). Because of this, when carrying out the

actual activity, I was not as adequately prepared as I could have been.

As with my first activity plan of the semester, I also believe that this activity would be

considered play-based because it did not involve a traditional paper-pencil task, but instead made

use of a meaningful game. The manipulatives that I created and then used during my activity

allowed Arabella to actually experience and do something with the material, helping her to learn

in a hands-on way. For instance, rather than just asking her to recall the character-event

correspondences from the story that we read together, she was able to use manipulatives in order

to actively construct and represent these things. Although my activity challenged Arabella to

employ and develop some of her skills, she was able to do so in a fun and engaging way that was

meaningful to her.

In order to modify my written plan for a child who was slightly less mature

developmentally, I could have done several things. For one, if the child was having difficulty

making predictions, I would have offered additional support by either modeling what this would

look like and/or calling the childs attention to what happened previously. As mentioned

previously, however, this was one thing that proved to be difficult the first time that I carried out

this activity with Arabella. The reason for this though, as stated earlier, was because of the fact

that she was able to offer predictions just not the ones that I had expected her to offer. Thus,

this modification would most likely be for children who struggled to offer predictions altogether.

Also for a child who is slightly less mature developmentally, I planned for two other

ways to offer support. For one, if the child engaging in the activity was having difficulty

identifying which character from the story (animal) goes with each event (action/item) when
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completing the chart, I would have referred back to the book in order to offer additional support.

In addition to this, if the child was having difficulty finding the correct character-event pairs

during the Memory game, I would have called their attention back to the previously completed

character-event chart in order to offer additional support.

In order to modify my written plan for a child who was slightly more mature

developmentally, I also could have done several things. For one, I could have reversed the

completion of the character-event chart. Rather than the chart already containing the cards with

the events, and asking the child to identify the character that goes with each event, I would have

reversed this process. Instead, the chart would have contained the cards with characters, and the

child would have been asked to identify the corresponding event. Also for a child who was more

mature developmentally, I would have steered the child away from referring back to the

previously completed character-event chart during the Memory game in order to provide him/her

with more of a challenge.

If Arabellas parent(s)/guardian(s) asked me about my activity plan, I would tell them

that I chose to carry it out on account of the fact that it provided me with the opportunity to both

employ and develop some of her skills that are related to important literacy concepts (i.e.

prediction; evaluation; recall). In doing so, I would be sure to mention that such skills are not

only important aspects of her development at the present moment, but will also have an impact

on her educational career in the future. I would also take the time to provide them with a brief

overview and explanation of the activity itself (reading the book The Busy Little Squirrel to her;

having her offer predictions and evaluate them throughout the story; having her recall and

represent key details from the text via a hands-on activity; engaging in a Memory game that also

required her to recall key details from the story). After this, if Arabellas parent(s)/guardian(s)
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still seemed to be concerned about the activity, I could take the time to go over more specific

details from the written plan with them, in addition to showing them the materials that were used

throughout the course of the activity. I would also inform them about her response to and

performance during the activity. For instance, I would tell them that she responded very well to

the activity she enjoyed it and remained engaged throughout, even expressing interest in taking

part in it again. I would also inform them of what this activity helped me to determine regarding

Arabellas current, as well as emerging, skills. This could be done by talking with them about her

performance in relation to the objectives, and I would also share with them information

regarding how I would use this information to drive her future learning experiences. One other

thing to mention, though, might also be suggestions for how they could provide opportunities for

her to work on these skills at home in order to further benefit her development in these areas.