Video-Taped Lesson Reflection

Domain 1: Planning and Preparation​:

I was pretty pleased with my effort planning this lesson. The lesson was moving along

according to plan until it was time for the students to start working on the lab. Unfortunately, we

experienced technical difficulties with the chromebooks. I was unprepared for this occurrence

because the thought never crossed my mind that the chromebooks would not be able to run the

lab. My original backup plan was to have students complete makeup work because no one in that

section has finished every assignment, but I elected to continue with the lab as an entire class

instead. While this is certainly far from optimal, I do not regret the decision as I got the students

started on the lab, and they can continue it at a later date since we were able to resolve the

technology issues during prep. Once again, I feel that the direct instruction and guided practice

sections of my lesson plan were sufficiently detailed (see lesson plan), and I was able to get

through those sections according to plan. I also feel that the learning objectives designed for the

lesson (see lesson plan) were strong and realistic for the students to complete if technical

difficulties did not take place. During my last video-recorded lesson and in seminar, I received

feedback to vary instruction, so I planned to jigsaw the lab, and I am confident that this would

have been effective if only the chromebooks worked. I also used a video as an instructional

resource that could garner student engagement. While I have been differentiating assessments

pretty well, I made a point to emphasize that Level 3 students will be given more support during

one on one conversations, while Level 1 students will be encouraged to be more independent.

This is something that I have been consistently doing, but it was beneficial to include it in the
actual lesson plan. Based on all of these factors about my lesson, I would give myself a score of

2 for planning and preparation.

Domain 2: Classroom Environment​:

I was happy with the classroom environment because engagement and behavior were

both solid for the majority of the lesson. The major factor that I attribute to the positive

classroom environment is an incentive system that I put in place which rewards positive student

behavior. While I had limited success with the incentive system at first, the impact became

obvious once some of classes started earning rewards for good behavior. Word of the rewards

got around to all of my students, and that has resulted in a noticeable improvement to behavior

for most of my classes. Behavior was not that great early on in the period, but I gave the class a

strike (part of the behavior incentive) during the lesson before recording started, and that resulted

in an improvement to the classroom environment. The classes striked for the day and current

streak of positive behavior was viewable to the entire class, but the information was to the side of

the room and out of the shot of the camera. Outside of the day to day classroom environment

norms, there were some specific instances of positive classroom management that I picked up on

when watching the lesson. One student used inappropriate language at one point during the

lesson, so my mentor teacher and I both clearly communicated that the type of language was

unacceptable without causing a major disruption to class. (3:57). I also gave the class simple

redirection when they seemed to lose focus on the video (11:00), which seemed to help get them

on task once again. During my last recorded lesson, I received feedback that downtime in the

lesson could lead to undesirable classroom behavior. For this reason, I gave the students a task to

write notes as I distributed materials necessary for the lab (15:13). The main issue with my
classroom environment in this lesson took place during a portion of the video that does not have

to be watched because it was mostly uneventful (15:00-31:30) I just did not know how to cut that

section of the video using the video analysis tool. During this portion of time, there were

technical difficulties with the chromebooks, but that is way too long a period of time for students

to not have an instructional task other than to access the lab. For the students with working

chromebooks, they had too much downtime which negatively impacted engagement at the end of

the lesson. Based on all of this information, I would give myself a score of 2 for classroom

environment.

Domain 3: Instructional Delivery​:

My performance in the lesson was weakest in this category for the second consecutive

lesson. I feel that I have been spending too much time during direct instruction, so my goal for

this lesson was to get through the powerpoint quickly. While I do not regret this goal, I may have

overcompensated a bit, because the lesson felt a tad rushed. I did not emphasize the new content

that there were three different types of ecological pyramids nearly enough. My inadequate

emphasis of the new idea became apparent during the check for understanding when the class

was only able to identify one type of ecological pyramid (12:44). The primary purpose of the

lesson was to create background for the lab, but it is concerning that I did not teach effectively

enough for the class to grasp the most key new idea. That being said, I think it was a good

decision for me to have the students write down the three ecological pyramids since they

struggled with that aspect of the content (14:40). The portion of the lesson in which I showed a

video also did not go as well as I had hoped. I selected the video to show to the class because

there were contradictions in the video compared to the concepts that we discussed in class (8:35,
10:25). While I was very pleased with the classes observations about this material, analyzing

these contradictions in the video seemed to dominate the focus of the class. That may have

caused a distraction away from the content necessary to reinforce the powerpoint lecture.

Considering all of this, I would give myself a 1 for instructional delivery, but I do feel that I have

improved since my last recorded lesson. The class also was unable to meet the learning

objectives (see lesson plan), but I completely attribute this to technical difficulties, as students

were not able to access the labs on the chromebooks. Without access to the lab, it was impossible

for students to meet the objectives for the lesson, but I still feel that they were realistic if the

computers functioned properly. It is true that engagement was not great when we did the lab as

an entire class, but I feel that it was the best solution available given the unfortunate

circumstances (31:55-37:03). I wanted to give the students independent and collaborative

opportunities to learn by jigsawing the lab, but I am satisfied with my adjustment to work on the

lab as an entire class.

Domain 4: Professionalism​:

I do not have too much to reflect on for his domain, as it is really difficult to evaluate

professionalism by simply analyzing and reflecting on one lesson. I feel that my attire, tone of

voice, and use of language were sufficiently professional for a teacher in a high school classroom

setting. Once again, I noticed little frequent use of the word ”so” when I watched my lesson. I

have been making an effort to limit my use of that word, but it appears that I have more work to

do in that regard. Such frequent use of the word makes it appear that I am not confident about

what I am saying. It is tough to evaluate myself for professionalism for this one lesson, because

most of the criteria relates to knowing state and school policies, and it is difficult to demonstrate
that knowledge during a lesson.. If I had to give myself a score solely based off of the videotaped

lesson, that score would be a 2 because I felt that I spoke clearly and acted appropriately.