Lesson Self- Assessment

Name: Anna Murack

Lesson topic: Language Arts- Inferences
Date: 10/12/18
School/grade level/ number of students: Woodlands School/3rd-4th Grade/24 Students
Name of Cooperating Teacher: Danielle Pajot

Planning and preparation: Describe how your plan provided opportunities for active engagement. How
did you provide for the needs of diverse learners? Did you adjust your plan in any way? Describe how
and why if you did.

This lesson began with a short, whole group review to make sure all students were on the same page and able to
recall the information we’ve been learning about inferences. Then we moved right into our small group
rotations. The first group had to complete a series of 4 questions as a formal assessment on a separate sheet of
paper from their story. However, students made it through 3 of the questions before we came close to having
our time end. So, in order to answer the final question in the 2 remaining minutes, we did it as a whole group.
We discussed it and answered it. Several of students took turns to volunteer their answers for question 4 and we
all discussed together why we agreed or disagreed. The second group had 4 questions to answer as well, most
students again, only made it through the first 3 questions. One or two were able to complete all 4. Just to make
sure we touched base on the 4th question, we discussed it again as a whole group and repeated the same process
I did with the first small group. The last group had one question to answer on a separate sheet of paper. This
question required them to follow up with at least 3 evidence pieces from the text to support their overall
inference on the lesson/theme that they inferred the story to be about. It was a pretty even split for students who
were able to answer fairly well in that 20 minutes and students who struggled a bit more. After several minutes
of having them write on their own, I offered up some of my supporting evidence pieces for my inference to help
give them ideas. This seemed to help the students. These students were able to finish within that 20 minute time
frame. Additionally, one last change I made in the first two small group rotations, was reading the story to them
once more before beginning their assessment because based on my check in with them, they all felt that
rereading the story would benefit them when answering the questions.

Classroom environment: Evaluate the ways in which your encouraged student participation. How did
you elicit student responses? How did you engage them in responding to you and each other? Evaluate
your plan for individual, small group and/or whole class work. How effective were these different
organizational techniques for keeping students involved in your lesson?

For two of my groups we discussed their 4th assessment question together as a group because of the time limit
we were stuck with. This encouraged many of the students to respond by volunteering their own answers that
they would’ve written down had we had the opportunity. It also allowed for them to voice some of the thoughts
they sometimes struggle with putting into words, on paper. This allowed for a discussion between them and
their peers as well as myself because we all needed to agree on whether the inferences they made were correct
or not and what could be changed if needed. Overall, each small group was very engaged from the very first
lesson of the unit and the level appropriate challenges seemed to be very successful with their comprehension
abilities.
Instruction: Evaluate your choices of instructional strategies. Did they have the effect you intended?
Were the needs of all learners met? What changes would you make if you repeated this lesson?

I started the lesson with a whole class quick review, solely for bringing them back to the content we were
focusing on. This benefited them and allowed them to come into our small group rotations, ready and eager to
participate and make inferences. I even was fortunate enough to have a few students tell me they were excited
for me to teach them a lesson again. Those words of encouragement further fueled my desire to make this as
awesome and engaging of a lesson as I could. All of my students did really well making inferences at all of their
individual levels, especially verbally. However, a change I would make is for the 4th grade level reading group.
I would have had sentence starters again on a worksheet, so they could begin right from there because it seemed
to help them a lot on the second day of the unit plan when I gave them a similar worksheet. Additionally, if I
could change the time I had with each group I would, but that is out of my control.

Assessment: What assessment processes did you plan and how did they work? What did you learn from
listening to student responses, examining their work or listening to their interactions? How well did your
assessment procedures inform you about student attainment of your lesson’s objectives?

One of my assessments that carried through the duration of each small group lesson was informal assessment. I
constantly checked in with them by asking for thumbs up, thumbs down, or thumbs to the side if each question
was making sense. I would review any of the questions that students put a thumb down to so that they were
clear on what it was asking. From listening to them, examining their post-it notes and verbal responses up to
this point, I’ve learned that they all caught onto the content of the lesson very well. The formal assessment for
this lesson was the short answer responses on a separate worksheet. They worked well for the most part, but the
time restraint required us to answer one of the written responses out loud as a group for two of the small groups.
This didn’t seem to be an issue though and in fact worked very well. I’m confident in their abilities to make
inferences using the appropriate sentence starters with the appropriate supporting evidence from the text.

Professional responsibilities: What did you learn from your cooperating teacher’s feedback on this
lesson? How will you apply it to future lessons?

My CT told me she was listen in on my lesson, but that she was very confident in my abilities to teach this
lesson based off the success of the first to unit plan lessons. I was also informed by her that she would like to
use my materials and ideas for this unit plan when she teaches inferencing in her future classes. She said her
feedback would be the same as the previous lesson (which is why I reattached the feedback from lesson two of
the unit plan). Hearing her say that prior to teaching the lesson, made me that much more confident to teach the
subject to the students. I know I’m not perfect, but I will continue to use her feedback from all my lessons I’ve
taught thus far and will teach, to support all my future lessons. Especially giving students positive reinforcement
to keep them engaged and confident.

Reflection: What did you learn about student learning and assessing from this lesson? How will it affect
your planning for future teaching?

I learned how incredibly important it is to create differentiated lesson plans. Especially because this was my
first time doing a unit plan, let alone a unit plan that really required those profound differentiations. I don’t
think I would’ve had the success that I did if I didn’t have that differentiation which met all the students at their
appropriate levels. This is something I will really keep in mind especially going forward with teaching future
lessons. I’ve always known of differentiations and its vitalness, but it just really stuck with me this time because
of how prominent it was in this unit plan.
Cooperating Teacher Feedback: Lesson #4 Lesson date: 10/12/18