Chelsea Poole Demo Lesson Reflection 11-21-13 1. I used learning targets that were student centered.

Words such as I within my learning targets guided students to think about the lesson and how it would apply to their learning experience. My learning targets presented a clear outline of what the lesson was going to be about. The learning targets I chose explicitly described the skills the students would possess by the end of my lesson.

2. I think my lesson was well scaffolded because I had specific intentions for each activity I presented in my lesson. I began by having the students watch muted music videos for them to watch while intently searching for text clues that would explicitly tell them the overall themes or messages of the videos. After this brief activity, I displayed images that related to the time period of the novel The Secret Life of Bees to provide background knowledge for students. This background knowledge would help the students better understand the conventions of society during the time period the novel was based upon. I think this was rigorous because it encouraged students to only derive information from the explicit text clues from the images. This engaged students in critical thinking skills and helped them make connections with the text. This assessment was formative in that it was informal and gave the students an opportunity to freely explore their thoughts and ideas.

3. I felt that I was confident before the class. I think my energy level was engaging and demanded attention and response from the students. My tone of voice was appropriate

because of the volume in which I spoke. I varied my tone of voice when I expected different things from the students. For example, when I wanted students to reflect on the images and silently write down their thoughts and ideas, I spoke more calmly and passively. When I wanted students to engage with me and share their ideas, I used a more direct tone of voice and used eye contact that conveyed I expected a response from them. I made it a point to mobilize throughout the room so that students would not become weary with me standing in one place. I think mobilizing helps the students to stay engaged because the teacher is showing enthusiasm by constantly moving. I also wanted to mobilize so that all the students in the room felt that I was expecting just as much from them I was everyone else in the classroom.

4. I think I could have closed my lesson in a better way that left them thinking about everything we covered together in the lesson. I felt that I had to close very abruptly to conserve time for my peers who were also teaching that day. Because of this, I was caught off guard with how to wrap up my lesson quickly and effectively. I think I could have reviewed the learning targets to leave students remembering the skills they were going to learn in my lesson.

5. Many of my peers commented on the strength of my teacher presence. I learned that I really must demand engagement by my presence as a teacher because my peers made a point to comment on this aspect. I learned that using things relevant to the students was very successful and broke the ice in the beginning of my lesson by using popular music

videos. I also learned that I could have integrated better assessment methods that were meaningful for the students. I think students need to feel that the work they did in class was for a purpose and I could have made that more clear in my assessment methods.