Unit Plan 1/Reading/Analysis and Reflection

Basic Information

1. Analyze the effectiveness of your instruction using the Pre/Post test. Explain the results of your graph. What conclusions can you reach about your students and your teaching? By giving the pretest in each of the areas of reading before teaching showed me that the students needed some effective teaching in order to do much better on the post-test and more importantly, understand the material that would be taught throughout the week. As one can see from the graph, students did not do very well on the pretest, with failing grades, the highest grade being a 60%. After teaching the reading unit all week and being sure that my students were understanding the concepts that I was teaching, and also by my trying to give extra help in small groups with particular difficulties that students were having in reading (which I gathered from my pretest and my observations over the previous weeks in class), I was pleased with the results of the post-test. The post-test was a big improvement, which made me feel glad. The grades this time ranged between 70 90%. By comparing the pretest and the post-test, I can come to the conclusion that my teaching was effective and the students learned from my teaching. 2. Record the results on a chart or table.

Reflection and self-assessment 1. Reflect on the effectiveness of your Unit Plan. Why or why not was your plan effective? I feel my reading unit plan was effective. The class that I am working in is a very structured one and things are done a certain way with consistency. We use the book and on each day of the week, there are certain skills to focus on. The way the week is laid out in the teacher's edition helped me to create an effective reading unit plan. With the help and supervision of my supervising teacher, I found effective ways to present each of the lessons to have some success with my teaching. I was able to use the teacher's edition guide to plan out my unit and to figure out what I had to be sure to teach and then research a little bit further on how to enhance my instruction and how to effectively teach it to the students to keep them engaged. In the beginning, it helped me a great deal to observe my supervising teacher and how she taught reading, how she followed the book and then created effective teaching for the students. 2. Reflect on your teaching effectiveness. What are your teaching strengths? What can you change to enhance student learning? What would you do differently? As I reflected on my teaching effectiveness, I thought about my strengths in teaching reading. I enjoy teaching reading, which I feel helps with strengths. I try to use different techniques and strategies to teach students, based on evaluations on which areas they are strongest in and which they are weakest in. For example, if fluency is the main issue, then I try to focus on helping the student in that area. If the weakness is comprehension, then those students will receive extra help in that area. I feel it is important to address all areas of reading, but to focus heavier on the weaker areas in small groups. I feel a positive strength that I have is to find out exactly what is wrong by pretesting and monitoring to pinpoint what needs to be worked on for improvement and then finding the right way to teach each individual student based on their learning style, to keep them focused, and then to keep them engaged in the learning. There are always things that can be worked on by a teacher to enhance student learning. What I would do differently in comparing my student teaching experience to having my own classroom one day is that I would gather different ideas from other teachers and see how they are addressing certain learning difficulties. This way, I have ideas that I can add to my own and I can gain different perspectives in addition to what I have learned thus far from my supervising teacher. I would like to be aware of anything that another teacher uses that may be able to help me to try to conquer a reading challenge that some of my students are facing so that they may keep moving ahead in their reading.