Reading Lesson Self-Evaluation Abby Duvall

I thought that my reading lesson went very well. Of course, there were some things
that, in retrospect, I would change. First, from the first time I taught the lesson to the second
time I taught the lesson, I changed the method in which I handed out the passages and
anticipation guides. Because of COVID-19, I cannot have students touch other people’s papers,
so I cannot pass papers back the rows. So, I have to do everything individually which takes time.
For the first class, I passed out the anticipation guides after the video which proved to be a
waste of time. The second time, I passed out each of the papers during the video which was
much better. As I was teaching, I was planning to just discuss the types of Native Americans and
the house that they lived in. However, I changed that and I had students use crayons to actually
mark it on their paper. Looking back, I should have had the students use highlighters because
some of them colored too dark on the paper and they could not see the words beneath.
Furthermore, I should have had the learning support student’s passages already highlighted. I
showed them what to highlight on the board. Finally, I should have moved the light from the
document camera in closer so the students could see exactly what I was highlighting; they were
struggling to see it and were confused.
However, there was multiple things that went well in this lesson. First, even though the
video was very cheesy and silly, the students did seem to enjoy it and learn more about Native
American homes. I think it was a great introduction for the lesson and a way to activate
student’s prior knowledge about this topic. Furthermore, they seemed to enjoy the anticipation
guide. The students seemed to like making a guess and then checking together as a class to find
the correct answer. Additionally, I was happy with their answers to the Writer and Me question
on the guide about how we use our environment for shelter now. The students used their
background knowledge from what they had previously learned in class and the knowledge from
the text to come up with very creative answers to this question. Finally, they loved the Kahoot.
The students were excited when they got the answer right and wanted to know what the
correct answer was. I loved watching them quickly search through their text to find the answer.
I thought this lesson went very well, the students learned about Native American homes, and
enjoyed this.
I used formative assessment to make sure students were learning during my lesson. I
relied heavily on body language and the student’s facial expressions for my formative
assessment. Often, their faces showed what their thoughts were and were reflective of the
entire class. Formative assessment was used as I noticed that if multiple students had the same
question, then most of the class had that question. I also used formative assessment during the
Kahoot to see how well students understood . If they seemed very confused, I knew I had to
review something.
My formative assessment was very useful in impacting my instruction. Because
assessment needs to drive instruction, I relied heavily on my formative assessment to decide
what I needed to review. For example, students were very confused as to what to highlight at
the beginning, so I decided to put the passage under the document camera to physically show
students what they needed to highlight. Furthermore, when students were confused about the
anticipation guide, I had multiple students ask me about it and as I was walking around, I
realized a few of the students were completing it wrong. Therefore, I put this document on the
document camera also and explicitly showed them where they needed to answer the
questions. I had to show them very directly that they were only to complete the “before”
section. I also used formative assessment to guide my instruction when I realized that students
were confused about the Kahoot link. I then restated the link, wrote it on the board, and made
sure that each student knew where to go before I moved on. I think formative assessment was
very important in the success of this lesson.
My planned assessment was the Kahoot game to see what students learned about
Native American homes. I also planned the anticipation guide as an assessment to review what
students knew and then what they learned from the passage. I think that the Kahoot was a
great assessment, the students seemed to enjoy it and it was low-stress for them and easy for
me to see how they did. Kahoot gives me a report on how each student performed, what
questions they answered correctly/incorrectly, and how many they did not answer. This was a
way for me to see whether students understood the passage, and even whether they could use
the passage to look back and find an answer. I decided not to use the anticipation guide as an
assessment because I decided it would be more beneficial if we did it together as a class to go
over all of the correct answers. I decided that this would help students to better comprehend
the passage. Because of the way I implemented this lesson, I could not have specifically
assessed the student’s fluency or even their comprehension. Assessing their fluency would have
been much more difficult especially in the full-class setting in which I did this lesson. I also did
not fully assess their comprehension. As a class, we correctly answered the questions on the
anticipation guide so I did not assess comprehension from that. I also allowed the students to
use the passage as they were completing the Kahoot, but there was only 30 seconds for the
students to answer, so they did have to remember some of the concepts from the passage. I
have learned that assessment of literacy skills is not very simple especially in a large group with
a limited amount of time.
I think formative assessment is very important and an aspect of the Christian worldview.
Genesis 1:27 says “So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created
them; male and female he created them.” Each of my students were made in the image of God
and so therefore, I need to treat them in a way that respects their abilities and where they are
at. Formative assessment is one way to do that and check on how students are doing
throughout the lesson in their understanding of the concepts. With this particular lesson, I do
not think that my assessment or even lesson would have looked very much different if it was
taught in a Christian setting. This lesson was not specifically a topic that could have been
changed to a Christian perspective. However, my formative assessment helps me to better
serve and love my students as the children of God that they are created to be. By learning
about different Native American homes, my students were learning about diversity and
respecting other cultures than their own. Revelation 7:9 says “After this I looked, and behold, a
great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and
languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm
branches in their hands”. Hopefully from this lesson, my students have a greater appreciation
for other cultures, because every culture, nation and tribe will be in heaven when God calls us
home. There are many Biblical principles that relate to the lesson that I taught.
In conclusion, I have learned a lot about literacy instruction from this lesson. This is the
first reading lesson that I have taught so it was definitely a learning experience. I have learned
that literacy instruction is easy to integrate into a social studies class, but it is very difficult to
have leveled texts when doing a whole-group activity. I thought that the learning support
students could have used my individual help with the passage, but because I was doing this as a
whole group activity, I could not give them all my support. I have also learned about how
helpful and useful anticipation guides are for guiding instruction and gauging student learning. I
want to use these more often in my future teaching because they were very helpful.
Furthermore, I think it is important to engage students with the lesson. The students were
much more excited about the video and the Kahoot than they were about the reading because
they were actively engaged and doing something. I think sandwiching exciting activities with the
more monotonous activity in the middle helps to keep student’s attention and keep them
excited. Overall, I learned so much from this lesson that I will remember in my future teaching.