Department of Teacher Education & Learning Sciences

Elementary Education Program

Formal Observation Reflection

Directions: Complete the reflection questions and submit your response to your observer prior to having a post-
conference to discuss the observation. If a conference is held immediately after the observation you will submit
your responses to the observer the following day via email.

Name: Fumi Agboola, Deena Alzaben, Leighton Mauze Date: 11/7/17

1. To what extent were learning outcomes appropriate and achievable to your

students?
The Learning Outcome of this lesson plan were for students to know what Veterans
Day is and when it is celebrated, know the importance of veterans, know how to
reciprocate kindness to everyone, and know how important our service members are.
Overall, these goals were met through discussion during our read aloud and through
making cards for Veterans.

2. How effective were your instructional strategies? What changes would you
make in your instructional approaches if you taught this lesson again? Why?
Before reading our book, we asked students about their prior knowledge of Veterans
Day and people that have serviced our country. Students were able to share about
people they know that are or have been in the military. In addition, we thought it was
effective to read a book and discuss the context of the text. In the future, we would
like to incorporate turn and talk tactics to provide further discourse.

3. Evaluate the effectiveness of your oral and written communication with

students. (Consider how well you communicated learning objectives, clarity of directions, use of
standard English, quality of questions and effectiveness of discussion techniques.)
In the beginning, we talked about what Veterans Day is in great detail. In addition,
during our read aloud, we asked questions that encouraged students to participate. In
the book, there were a lot of vocabulary words (such as military, uniform, etc.). We
made sure that students really understood the language in the text. We provided clear
instructions on writing the card to Veterans in order for students to know the purpose
of this activity.

4. Evaluate the level of student engagement in your lesson. (Consider how you presented
the content/skills, the activities and assignments for students, grouping of students, and structure and
pacing of the lesson.)
The students were very engaged in the lesson. Many of the kids were very excited
because they know someone who is a Veteran. Their engagement showed in their
cards. They all put a lot of effort into them and drew pictures. Many kids also were
eager to participate in the discussion.

5. How effectively did you use instructional materials, resources, and/or

technology?
We used Big Universe and a SmartBoard to enhance our lesson. Big Universe was
great for providing a relevant read-aloud that introduced our topic and engaged the
 students. The SmartBoard was very helpful for displaying sentence-starters for the
kids who needed them to get started.

6. To what extent were your assessment strategies effective? What changes would
you make in your assessment approach if you taught this lesson again? Why?
To assess the students learning, we had them make cards for Veterans. Through
these cards we could see how much the kids learned about this holiday and the
importance of being appreciative and saying thank you to our helpers. If we were to
do the lesson again, we would do a turn and talk to further assess their understanding
of Veterans Day and its importance.

7. To what extent was your feedback to students accurate, substantive,

constructive, specific, and/or timely?
We gave the students feedback on their neatness and sentence structure. We wanted
to incorporate what they were learning about sentences (grammar, punctuation,
spaces, and capitalizations) into our lesson to see what they had learned so far.
8. To what extent did the classroom management and environment contribute to
student learning? (Consider your classroom procedures, your use of physical space, and the
students conduct.)
Our classroom management and environment contributed a lot to our student learning.
During the lesson, we had to say hard hat a couple of times which tells the students
to put their hands on their head and be quiet. Even though we had to do this a couple
of times, we had their attention and they learned what we wanted them to.

9. Did you make modifications to your lesson plan during the lesson? If so, what
were they and what motivated these changes?
No, we did not make modifications to our lesson plan during the lesson.

10. Was your Teaching Behavior Focus goal met?

Yes, our teaching behavior focus goal was met. We wanted to call on students that
werent called on often. We still allowed students to decide whether or not they
wanted to share, but called on students that were picked rarely during other lessons.