Julia Kaufman

SPED 775
Artifact 14 Reflection Reflective Journal

Reflection

Assignment

The Reflective Journal Assignment of SPED 775 was an assignment that required me to

write a reflective paper about a lesson that I delivered in the general education setting. Per the

assignment description I was to, Watch a video (either provided or one you uploaded) and take

observational notes, write comments based on personal thoughts and ideas; read the articles

and/or watch a webinar presentation; and write a 500-word summary synthesizing what s/he has

learned. This specific assignment required me to read about providing students opportunities to

respond and reflect on this area in my own instruction.

Purpose

The purpose of this assignment was, per the assignment description, to encourage

practicum students to become reflective professionals who examine their instruction, recognize

research-based practices, improve and modify lessons. Reflective practice is essential to

becoming a better educator and the purpose of this assignment was to allow us a specific place to

reflect on our teaching, specifically in the area of opportunities to respond. By truly reflecting

on our teaching we become better educators and create better lessons. The observational notes

of this assignment required us to directly link moments from our teaching to the research weve

read from the week.

Revision
Julia Kaufman
SPED 775
Artifact 14 Reflection Reflective Journal
While I scored 100% on the assignment I revised it based on the professors feedback.

This included adding detail, clarifying changes in my personal practice, and correcting

grammatical errors.

Professional Development

As a professional it can often be difficult accurately reflect on our work in a way that

meaningful to our future teaching. The observational notes required in this lesson allowed me to

directly connect my teaching practices to research weve been reading in class. Furthermore, we

were able to reflect on the meaning of our teaching observations using these observation notes.

One of my goals for this year is to work with each of my students in their classroom at least once

a week. With the amount of pull out time on my caseload this will require a distinct effort.

Reflecting on, and rereading, this journal assignment gave me motivation to continue with this

goal. It also reminded me of the importance of reflection in education. It can be easy to get in a

rut of the day to day teaching and it is essential to continue to reflect on my lessons and how

the directly relate back to research-based practices. I have gone back through and taken notes on

each of the journal topics from this course and plan to reflect on one each week, for each of my

groups, to improve my teaching practices.