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: Nadia Boron Date: 12/2/21

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

I feel as if my instructional strategies were ineffective because of the lack of student engagement.
When teaching the lesson again I would set clearer boundaries by saying “I am going to go around the
group and everyone is going to share at least one answer to my question” instead of simply stating
“everyone is going to share one answer”. Additionally, I would push harder for all the students to share
to clearly demonstrate that I value all student’s academic success. Overall teaching through out the
semester I could have improved my teaching by setting stricter boundaries as far as when it is
appropriate to be off topic versus when it is not.

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 was very shocked by the lack of student engagement because I expected them to be eager to
participate in the opportunity to speak about themselves. I scaffolded by telling the students I expected
everyone to answer my questions and guided them to answer my questions by asking additional focus
questions and making suggestions towards possible answers. I attempted to extend students thinking by
relating the focus questions to their lived experiences.

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 assessed if students met the learning objective based on their response to questions asked vocally. I
do not think this method would be effective for a group of students larger than 4-5 students but worked
effectively for a small group of students. I think the assessment could be improved by adding a written
portion to make tracking data easier and encouraging participation. If I was working with the whole
class in the future using a written assessment would be essential for tracking students’ answers, but
there must be more time included to account for writing time.
 Elementary Education Program
Department of Teacher Education & Learning Sciences

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

I feel as if the set expectations and transitions were only moderately effective due to lack of focus and
motivation to participate. In the future I would be stricter with acceptance of side conversations and set
higher academic expectations by ensuring every student participated. Another change I would make is
spending more time considering what the students’ motivation to participate is. I believe the
combination of these three changes would lead to higher engagement rates.

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

Last minute my peers and I decided to focus on discussions based off of similarities out of fear talking
about differences could go in the wrong direction, even though we still included content about
differences in the video we played for the class. I also chose to ask questions related to the students
lived experiences rather than ask them about the similarities and differences of Elmo and Abby they
saw in the video because I felt this was just asking them to repeat information rather than think
critically. My peers who did not make this change and had better engagement, but I felt this may have
been due to the simplicity of the questions they asked. For this reason, I am unsure if this was a change
that overall improved the lesson.

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

I believe I met all of my Teaching Behavior Focuses by providing each student with the
opportunity to engage in discussion and by incorporating their lived experiences. In addition to
relating the content to their lived experiences I allowed time for personal discussion by checking in
on everyone’s mental health before beginning the lesson. To improve including time for mental
health check ins in the future I need to have clearer transitions and expectations going forward. I
can do this by making it clearer when I expect the students to talk and when I expect them to be
listening.