Reflection Responses 

1. How and why did you use funds of knowledge data in designing the unit? 
When I was writing the lesson on community helpers, I used students’ funds of 
knowledge in the lesson by incorporating community helpers in the school and people 
they interact with daily. I knew that most, of not all, of the students in my class walked to 
school, which meant that they knew and interacted with the crossing guards. I emphasized 
the importance of crossing guards as a community helper because of the information I 
knew about my students. I also knew that many students had parents that are “community 
helpers”. One of my student’s dad is a police officer and another one of my student’s dads 
is a UPS delivery person. I made sure to mention and include those jobs in my community 
helpers lesson to help students make a connection to what we were learning about.  
I used my focus student’s funds of knowledge in my unit plan by specifically 
incorporating a lot of writing opportunities into my lessons. My focus student, Aribelle, 
loves to write and she also likes work by herself. There was a lot of pair work and talking 
that went on in each of my lessons, but I also made sure to incorporate opportunities for 
students to silently work on their writing activity. Aribelle also likes to share with the class 
her ideas and her writing. In Lesson 6, I allowed students to share their “campaign 
speeches” with the class and their reading buddies and Aribelle was one of the students 
who read hers to the class. She did a great job and she loved being able to read her work 
and share it with the class.  
 
2. How and why did you use the research in context data you collected as you designed 
your unit?  
I used my research in context data in various ways as I designed my unit. When 
observing the neighborhood, I noticed that there were many crossing guards and only one 
bus during the morning drop off and afternoon pick up. To me, this was helpful 
information because it told me that, as a neighborhood school, most of the students 
walked to school or had their parents drive them. As I observed the neighborhood and 
school, I got the sense that it was a close community. I thought that doing my unit on 
citizenship and tying in community helpers and other topics would help connect students’ 
backgrounds to the unit. When I taught Lesson 5 about community helpers, I made sure to 
include crossing guards and other members of the school such as the principal, librarian, 
lunch ladies, custodian, etc. The neighborhood surrounding Highland Park is also a fairly 
nice and safe neighborhood. To help give students a different perspective, I mentioned in 
Lesson 2 about rights and responsibilities, that some children do not get to go to school in 
other countries and they don’t have access to education. To a second grader, not going to 
school might seem awesome, but I wanted to help students understand that they are very 
lucky that they go to a safe school and it is their responsibility to learn while they are at 
school.  
 
3. How and why did you use the pre-assessment data of students’ knowledge, abilities, 
and interests as you designed your curriculum and made instructional decisions? 
The pre-assessment helped me learn about my students’ background knowledge 
and their interests and gave me insight into what I needed to teach and how I could 
incorporate their interests into my unit plan. The data helped guide my instruction, but it 
also helped guide my strategies. It was very beneficial having that data because I was able 
to make decisions about how I wanted to present the content. The pre-assessment data 
showed me that many students knew what responsibilities were, but didn’t understand 
what rights were. I used that information to help guide my instruction and designing of the 
lesson on rights and responsibilities. In Lesson 2, the lesson about rights and 
responsibilities, I used multiple teaching strategies to ensure that all students received 
access to the content. I showed a video, gave students opportunities to talk to each other, 
had a game for them to play, and read a story. I also had students write down one right 
they had and one responsibility they had as a quick assessment to see if they were 
understanding and meeting objectives. 
The pre-assessment also showed me how my students like to learn at school. I used 
that information to incorporate activities, games, videos, books, and partner work into 
each of my lessons. Many of my students like to play games because it is something 
different and fun. So in Lesson 5, “Community Helpers”, I made a Bingo game for students 
to play to practice understanding community helpers and their jobs. In Lesson 5 I also read 
a book because on the pre-assessment, many of my students answered that they like to 
learn by reading books. 
 
4. How did you conduct formative assessment and make changes as you taught your 
lesson? (Lesson 5 - Community Helpers) 
For this lesson, I started off by asking students if they knew what community 
helpers were. This helped me assess their background knowledge about community 
helpers and what they already knew about the topic. It helped guide the questions I 
wanted to ask them. The students seemed to understand what community helpers were, 
and gave some good examples, but I wanted to push them to think about ​how​ those 
community helpers helped the community. 
As I read the book “Whose Hands Are These?”, I assessed if students were able to 
guess who the community helpers were. For most of the community helpers, students 
were able to quickly guess who it was based on the clues. But there were some community 
helpers that the students were not able to guess. Perhaps that was because they did not 
think of those jobs as community helpers before such as a potter, cooks, and referees. I 
think it was good that they weren’t able to guess some of the community helpers because 
it made them think about how those people were community helpers and what they did to 
benefit the community. 
Throughout the lesson I was constantly listening to students’ answers and their 
conversations with each other to see if they were understanding what community helpers 
were , how they helped the community, and what community helpers we have in our 
school and neighborhood. Students were able to grasp the idea of what community 
helpers are and how they benefit the community, so I gave students a “community helpers 
worksheet” and had them write down ways ​they​ could be community helpers at school. I 
had this already planned into the lesson, but I was going to use it depending on how I felt 
students were understanding. I thought it would be a good way for students to slightly 
shift their thinking and consider how they could be community helpers themselves. The 
worksheet helped me assess their writing and also if they were able to make connections 
to themselves about how they can be community helpers.  
And lastly, the Bingo game was a fun way for me to assess if the students 
understood the different community helpers’ jobs. I gave students clues about what the 
community helper did or what they wore and the students had to guess what community 
helper it was based on my clues. Most of the students got my clues, but there were a few 
instances where they mixed up the clue for a different community helper. I think the game 
was good practice for them to identify community helpers and their different jobs.  
 
5. What effective teaching strategies and technology did you use?  
(Lesson 2 - Rights and Responsibilities, Lesson 6 - Thanking Community Helpers) 
I frequently used technology in my lessons. Whether it was watching a BrainPOP 
Jr. video or writing on a graphic organizer on the SmartBoard, technology played a part in 
my unit plan. Being able to use technology was very helpful and beneficial because 
without it, I wouldn’t have been able to use as many strategies or model what I wanted 
students to do as effectively.  
One specific example of using technology is in Lesson 2 when I showed a BrainPOP 
Jr. video about rights and responsibilities. This was an effective teaching strategy because 
it provided students with a different mode of representation because it connected 
pictures and vocabulary. I also created a PowerPoint for a game where students had to 
determine whether the statement was a right or a responsibility. Unfortunately, we didn’t 
have a chance to play it and had to move on to other things, but I think it would have been 
great practice for them to differentiate between rights and responsibilities.  
Another example of when I used effective teaching strategies and technology is in 
Lesson 6. I used the SmartBoard to model how to write a thank you note. I made a graphic 
organizer in PowerPoint and projected it on the board (the graphic organizer I used on the 
board was the same one students would later use to write their own thank you notes). I 
showed students how to write a thank you note and how to follow the graphic organizer. 
It was very helpful being able to write on the board instead of having to use the DocCam in 
the back of the room. I think modeling how to do it was very helpful for students who 
struggle with writing and I think it was beneficial that I used the same graphic organizer on 
the board that students would be using, so the format looked the same. It helped my visual 
learners see how to do it and what was expected of them.  
 
6. Behavior: What were your concerns; what worked; what did not; challenges?  
(Lesson 3 - Voting) 
I was really nervous about doing a big candy voting activity. I wanted it to be fun, 
but I knew that it could easily derail and quickly go downhill if my classroom management 
was lacking. I decided to do it anyway and make sure that I prepared materials ahead of 
time, clearly stated expectations, and praised students who were following directions. I 
found that, more often than not, using positive reinforcement with my students worked 
better than using negative reinforcement. 
The day of the lesson, I put some skittles in paper cups and m&ms in different paper 
cups and set them aside until I needed them in my lesson. The plan was for each student to 
have their own individual paper cups; one with skittles and one with m&ms. I assessed 
prior knowledge and background knowledge about voting, read the book “Duck for 
President” by Doreen Cronin, and then had students go back to their seats. I explained to 
the students that we would be doing a fun voting activity about which candy was best, but 
before we could do that, we had to have a campaign and election like in “Duck for 
President” and part of the campaign would be writing speeches. I told students that we 
were going to fill out a graphic organizer as a class so we could come up with good 
arguments for both candies. I made it clear that if students weren’t following along and 
they were too distracted by their candy, that they wouldn’t be able to participate in our 
fun activity. I passed out the graphic organizer and displayed it on the SmartBoard so I 
could model how to fill it out. Before I passed out the m&m’s, I told my students to think 
about what makes m&m's the best candy and to share it with their shoulder partner. I then 
passed out the m&ms for students to eat and brainstorm adjectives that describe the 
candy and arguments for why it is the best. They did so good! Everyone was eager to 
participate and they followed along magnificently. As I wrote down their thoughts on the 
board, they copied what I wrote down. We repeated this process with skittles and it went 
amazing as well. Some of the things the students came up with surprised me and showed 
me how observant they really are. Some of the adjectives they came up with for m&m’s 
were “melty”, “crunchy”, “milky”. A few of the adjectives they came up with for skittles 
were “fruity”, “citrusy”, “chewy”.  
Doing something fun and different with your class can be a little nerve-racking, 
especially because you don’t know how it is going to go, but setting up expectations and 
modeling expected behavior is essential. I think being prepared and being very clear in my 
expectations and the rules helped with the behavior in my class. There are things I could 
have done differently and better, but I was very happy with how it went because it didn’t 
fall apart into chaos, the students had fun and participated, and they were engaged in 
what we were doing.  
 
7. Academic: What were your concerns; what worked; what did not; challenges?  
(Lesson 6 - Thanking Community Helpers) 
There are a couple of students in my class that struggle with reading and especially 
with writing. I was worried that doing a lot of writing would be challenging for them and 
make it so they could not fully participate in certain activities. Using graphic organizers 
was very helpful and helped support those students who struggle with writing. When we 
wrote thank you notes to community helpers, I gave all students a graphic organizer to 
write a rough draft. After they wrote it on their graphic organizer, and I checked spelling, I 
had them copy what they wrote into their card. This worked very well for students who 
struggled with writing because they had sentence frames and after I checked and fixed 
their spelling, all they had to do was copy it down in a card. They didn’t have to think about 
what they were writing for a second time, or worry that they were spelling something 
wrong in the final draft of their card. 
Another concern I had was cramming so much content into just seven lessons. I 
think if I were to teach this unit again in the future, I would break up each of the lessons 
into multiple lessons. Many of my lesson plans could easily have been turned into two or 
three more lessons, but it is difficult to find time to teach 21 social studies lessons when 
you are in someone else’s classroom and only have 12 weeks to do so. Even though that 
was a concern and a challenge I had, my students rose to the occasion and did a good job 
at keeping up and staying engaged. I loved teaching my unit plan and I think the students 
enjoyed it as well because I used multiple teaching strategies and we did many different 
activities.  
 
8. How would you describe student learning during the unit, based on pre-and post 
assessment data? 
Based on the pre and post assessment data, most of the students showed growth 
and learned something during this unit. Four students did not show growth, and one 
student’s score actually went down. Looking at the students who did not show growth, 
one student qualifies for Resource and got all the same questions wrong which tells me 
that perhaps he didn’t learn anything because he wasn’t getting tier 3 intervention. Two of 
the other students who did not show growth struggle to focus during class and are 
constantly needing to be reminded to pay attention. As a class, we reviewed all the 
questions on the post assessment before taking it and they still got questions wrong. One 
of the boys got all of the same questions wrong as well. The student whose score went 
down also struggles with focusing and seems to always be in his own world. Although it 
was hard to see that not every student showed growth, I was happy to see that 15 out of 
20 students showed growth and that many of those students received 100% on the post 
assessment. Tests are a good way to assess student learning and growth, but it is also 
important to look at and take into account other assessments. I had students do a lot of 
writing activities which helped me assess their learning and we also played some games.   
 
9. Take one lesson guide and discuss what would be the next steps for students who did 
not meet your objectives. (Lesson 2 - Rights and Responsibilities) 
This lesson was tricky because it really could have been made into two lessons. 
Looking back at the writing activity we did and the post assessment, it’s clear that not all 
students fully grasped the idea of rights. For students who did not meet my objectives, and 
even students who did, I would teach a second lesson focusing more on rights. I would talk 
about the Bill of Rights and perhaps take time to make a “Bill of Rights” for the classroom. I 
would even reuse the game I made where students identify if the statement is a right or 
responsibility. I would also use different vocabulary to define a right and instead of saying 
“something you get to do” or “something you can do”, I would say “it is a freedom that is 
protected”. I think being more specific like that would help students recognize and 
understand what rights are. To extend this, during Daily 5 word work, I would have 
students practice what they learned by doing word sorts about rights and responsibilities. 
A word sort is where students sort the word or phrase into categories. This specific sort 
would give students practice sorting statements and deciding if it is a right or 
responsibility. This would give all students, especially those who did not meet the 
objectives, practice and familiarity differentiating between rights and responsibilities.  
 
10. What will you do the same and/or differently in the future in terms of assessing 
student learning and using assessments to design curriculum? 
In the future, I will plan multiple lessons to cover concepts that students struggle 
with on the pre-assessment. I will really take the time to go over that concept and topic to 
make sure they fully understand it before moving on. Based on the data from the 
pre-assessment for this unit, I should have planned at least two lessons for rights and 
responsibilities. Going forward, I will plan more lessons for concepts that students 
struggle with and do mini-lessons for concepts students already seem to understand.  
I will also use quick “check-ins” or “exit tickets” at the end of each lesson to see if 
students are understanding and meeting the objectives. For example, in Lesson 1, one of 
the objectives was “Students will explore the characteristics and actions of good citizens”. 
A future exit ticket for this lesson could be “Write 3 characteristics or actions of good 
citizens”. I could also do the check-ins at the beginning of lessons as a review to see if 
students remember what we talked about in the previous lesson. Based on the feedback I 
get from these “check-ins” and “exit tickets”, I will adjust my lessons accordingly. If 
students are struggling with a specific concept, I will take time to reteach and review 
before moving on. I think it is important that teachers use assessment to guide their 
instruction, otherwise they aren’t meeting the needs of their students.