Elizabeth Kent

ED 321 Self-Assessment for Observed Lesson

Planning and Preparation (AEA: Conceptualization, DiagnosisWTS: 1,7DISP: Respect Responsibility)

Explain and defend the decisions you made in choosing your objectives and the
assessment tools/strategies for this lesson. Even if the lesson was given to you to teach,
you must consider the effectiveness of the objectives and assessments.
The objective was chosen for this lesson based on what the students needed to work on. The
lesson objective was: The students will be able to conduct a lab using different masses and
motions, create a graph with the data, and analyze the graph. Graphing and analyzing data is a
skill that eighth graders must be proficient with by the time they get to high school. The students
in my class had some practice with it before, but they needed a bit more practice which was
evident with the lab I taught. The assessment tools I used were the elements of the lab that each
student completed and shared online through google docs. These elements include their data
table, graph, analysis paragraph, conclusion paragraph, and their presentation. I chose these
assessment strategies so that I would be able to tell if each student understood the lab and parts
of it and could articulate it orally to the class using their graphs.

Classroom Environment (AEA: Coordination, Integrative InteractionWTS: 2,3,5DISP: Respect,

Responsibility)

What were the discipline issues that presented themselves during the teaching of this
lesson? How did you anticipate these and handle them?
Some students were not working on their presentation when given the time, some groups forgot
to write their independent and dependent relationship on the board, some students were talking
while their classmates were presenting, and others were acting goofy for the fun of it. I
anticipated most of these by planning to walk around during work time and reminding students
to stay on task and fill in the chart on the board. I already knew that this was a chatty class, so I
had them rate each presentation as reliable or not and defend their answer. Sometimes when a
student was acting silly and voting the opposite on purpose, I would call on him to defend his
answer. Sometimes a nice discussion would come out of it and other times he would change his
answer. Asking the students to give their full attention to the presenters often times quieted them
down, and moving quickly through each presentation seemed to work also so the students would
not become bored.
Instruction (AEA: Communication, Coordination, Diagnosis, Integrative InteractionWTS: 2,3,4,5,6,7DISP:
Respect Responsibility), Assessment (AEA: Diagnosis, Integrative InteractionWTS: 8,9DISP: Respect,
Reflection), Professional Responsibilities (AEA: Communication, Integrative InteractionWTS: 10DISP:
Collaboration, Communication)

After teaching the lesson and analyzing student work, describe how your decisions
impacted student learning. How do you know? How well did your assessment connect to
the lesson objectives? Are there changes you would make or things you could have done
differently?
The decisions I made about how to teach the lesson, set up the lab, and have the students share
out their findings was a good way to approach this task. Student learning was evident through the
lab reports of the students and the way I set up the lab allowed students to spend a majority of the
time with the important parts of the lab like the analysis and conclusion. Using the discussion
helped the students to incorporate other ideas into their writing as well. The assessment
connected directly to the lesson objectives since I wanted them to produce work that showed that
they understood the objective. Changes I would have made would be to discuss the laws of
motion after the presenting of the graphs so that students could make the connection between
their experiment and the science behind it. I sort of glossed over the laws of motion during the
introduction on the first day and then asked them to incorporate the laws into their analysis. I
might have also shown the students a well written sample analysis and conclusion so they would
know what my CT and I were looking for.
Consider student learning as you reflect on your teaching of this lesson. Explain how the
evidence you obtained in your lesson (assessment) demonstrated the degree to which all
students achieved your objectives.
The lab write-ups the students completed allowed me to see the degree to which all students achieved
the objective quite clearly. I could look at each one and tell exactly where they did well and points of
struggle and/or the next teaching point they would need. As a whole, I could tell that my objective was
met through the group sharing on the second day of this lab. The students were able to describe their
claim, provide evidence, and answer questions.

Professional Responsibilities (AEA: Communication, Integrative InteractionWTS: 10DISP:

Collaboration, Communication)

Explain how you incorporated feedback from your cooperating teacher and supervisor, if
applicable, to the planning/teaching of this lesson. What decisions did you make based on
feedback received?
I incorporated lots of feedback from my cooperating teacher to the planning of this lesson by
sitting down with her and discussing the procedure that would happen on both days of the lab. I
asked questions and provided my own input in talking about the lesson and then I wrote
everything on the lesson plan format and had my CT look over it again and offer suggestions. On
the day of teaching, my CT shared with me how the lesson panned out for her first and second
hours since I was not there to watch them and offered small suggestions in my teaching of the
lesson based on the students. I also incorporated feedback I received from my supervisor through
discipline techniques and content. Decisions I made based on the feedback were what I ideas
from others I would incorporate, and where my own ideas and beliefs fit in.