Elementary Education Program

Department of Teacher Education & Learning Sciences

Formal Observation Reflection

Directions: Complete the reflection questions and submit your response to your observer prior to
having a post-conference to discuss the observation. If a conference is held immediately after the
observation, you will submit your responses to the observer the following day via email.

Name: Krista Baldwin Date: December 3, 2019

1. How effective were your instructional strategies? What changes would you make in your
instructional approaches if you taught this lesson again? Why?
I was surprised with how well our lesson went. The students were engaged with the activity and shared
thoughtful ideas and experiences during the discussions. We had only half the time available that we
had originally planned for. We had to rush through the ending activity, so I think I might also come up
with a back-up plan for how to shorten the activity, if needed.

2. Compare how students actually responded to the lesson verses the way you anticipated they would
respond. Explain how you scaffolded or extended students’ thinking.
The students were engaged and had thoughtful discussions. The book has higher-level metaphors that
were a bit more difficult for them to understand, like the egg cracking. We had a bit longer of a
discussion on this to explain that while we don’t crack, we may get upset or hurt and it can be similar
to breaking, or cracking. The Simon Says activity went very well!

3. Describe how you assessed whether your students achieved the objective of the lesson. Was this
effective? If not, what would you change about your assessment?
I critically analyzed their responses after the Simon Says activity. One of the students began being
disruptive during the discussion and another student looked to them and said, “be respectful, please.”
Following the lesson, the students talked about and showed respect to each other, too.

4. How effectively did you motivate your students, set and enforce expectations, and handle
transitions? Would you change anything and if so, why?
I would say that the students were fully motivated. They saw showing respect as a job, or a duty, to do
and they were eager to do it. I think beginning each part of the lesson with a reminder of expectations
truly helped the transitions of the lesson and ease classroom management on our parts. The students
also know many of the call-and-response sayings, which is extremely helpful to quickly get their
attention.

5. Did you make modifications to your lesson plan during the lesson? If so, what were they and what
motivated these changes?
We shortened the launch discussion of what it means to be ‘good’ or how The Good Egg would be
good to others because we had less time than planned for the lesson.

6. How did you meet your Teaching Behavior Focus? If you did not meet it, what would help you to
meet it next time?
For meeting priming students for engagement, I believe we did fairly well. I would have liked to give
more clear, concise guided demonstrations, like maybe writing things on a poster chart. I also wish we
would’ve had time for students to extend their knowledge to thinking about respect in the community.+