Elementary Education Program

Department of Teacher Education & Learning Sciences

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: Macayla Tyndall Date: 11/26/2019f

1. How effective were your instructional strategies? What changes would you make in your
instructional approaches if you taught this lesson again? Why?

One of the instructional strategies that I used was having interactive instruction throughout the read
aloud. This was effective because the students were included how they thought and got to share with
the whole group during discussions. I would keep that instructional strategy the same if I taught this
lesson again. Another instructional strategy I used was having students to compare and contrast the
emotions that Isaac goes through with their own personal experiences. Although this was effective, I
would have liked to spend more time on this. Next time I would give students a chance to “Think, Pair,
Share” to promote student discourse or give students a chance to write a narrative on what they
compared.

2. Compare how students actually responded to the lesson verses the way you anticipated they would
respond. Explain how you scaffolded or extended students’ thinking.

I anticipated that the students to respond to the coloring activity by saying that having more colors
made their picture beautiful. While the students responded this way, they also unexpectedly took the
coloring too seriously and would not put down the crayons. The crayons ended up being a distraction
while I was trying to engage the class in a discussion. The students engaged with excitement during the
text and I was pleased with how many students participated in sharing when I asked the group
questions. During the last activity with the cut-out hands and the sentence structure I gave the students
to use, I was surprised at the confusion some of the students still had. I had not spent much time on
defining the word unique, and I should have spent more time on that at the beginning.

3. Describe how you assessed whether your students achieved the objective of the lesson. Was this
effective? If not, what would you change about your assessment?

I listened to the whole and small group discussions to formatively assess students’ thinking during and
after the read aloud. Students were able to answer and ask questions using who, what, when, where,
and why sentence starters. The students have spent a few weeks being introduced to those sentences
starters and were able to take it to the next level when using them to answer and ask story problems.
Next time I would consider having them write two to three sentences about why being different is okay
instead of just having them fill in the blanks of the sentence starter.

4. How effectively did you motivate your students, set and enforce expectations, and handle
transitions? Would you change anything and if so, why?

Before any read aloud that is done in Ms. Dove’s class, the class is asked to raise their hands and tell
the teacher the expectations for a read aloud. This sets the standard for what the is expected of the
 Elementary Education Program
Department of Teacher Education & Learning Sciences

students during class and encourages them to hold one another accountable. The transition from the
coloring was not very effective and I should have either picked up the pictures and crayons before the
reading so that the students were not drawing during the discussion.

5. Did you make modifications to your lesson plan during the lesson? If so, what were they and what
motivated these changes?

During the lesson, I modified some of the questions I planned on asking during the story. When I was
reading and I realized I was losing some student focus, I would ask a question that students could find
explicitly in the text to draw them back in. I also tried to be more intentional when asking questions to
the class using the who, what, when, where, why, and how sentence structures.

6. How did you meet your Teaching Behavior Focus? If you did not meet it, what would help you to
meet it next time?

The teacher behavior focus I wanted to meet was creating a welcoming classroom that uses people
first language. I feel that I met this by describing individuals with disabilities as something they have
rather than something they are. This was also emphasized in our reading called Uniquely Wired by
Julia Cook, and we as a class were able to understand that Isaac was a person with autism, not an
autistic person. Next time I would like to emphasize more on examples we do not use rather than
showing the class only correct examples.