Recommended

College of Arts and Sciences

Department of Education

Model Observation Protocol: Candidate Self-Reflection Form

Directions: Following an announced or an unannounced observation, please use the form below to reflect on the
lesson. Submit the form to your Supervising Practitioner/Program Supervisor within 24 hours of the observation.

Name: Madeline Fowler

Observation Details
Date: 10/22/2021 Time (start/end): 10:52-11:47

Content Topic/ “Poison” and Vocabulary/ AAROTLSWBAT write a thematic statement and review
Lesson Objective: vocabulary for an upcoming quiz.

Type of Observation: Unannounced Observed by: Chris Rea

Supervising Program
Announced x Unannounced x
Practitioner Supervisor

Reflection Prompt: What do you think went particularly well? How did this strength impact your students’
learning?
“Poison” is a story with a pretty ambiguous ending and message, so I am glad that I decided to have students
reflect on it individually before we discussed any further. This assured that students were practicing creative
and critical thinking skills on their own. I also made sure to reiterate the purpose of the “Writer’s Notebook”
before students began writing. I told students that writing well takes a lot of practice, and that’s why we do this
Writer’s Notebook entries; it is not about being ‘right’ or having beautiful writing, but it’s about practicing the
craft of writing and working on our critical thinking skills. I think this helped take the stress out of the exercise
for both my overachievers who want everything to be perfect and my struggling students who don’t even want
to try. As a result, the act of writing in this particular lesson became a lot more relaxed and accessible for my
students. In my conference with Mr. Rea, he told me that one of my biggest strengths is the way I circulate and
provide one on one help with students during individual work. I was able to provide a lot of assistance to
students who felt lost or needed reassurance during the Writer’s Notebook activity.

Reflection Prompt: If you could teach this lesson again, is there anything you would do differently? How would this
have impacted your students’ learning?
I was on a huge time crunch for this lesson. The previous day, I had to totally abandon a lesson on the short story
“Poison” to focus on grammar, which was more pressing at the time. As a result, I had to fit finishing “Poison,”
discussing “Poison,” and reviewing vocabulary for the next day’s vocabulary quiz into one lesson. I ended up having
to cut out the discussion piece so that we would have enough time to review vocab. When looking over my
students’ Writer’s Notebook entries, I realized that the lack of discussion really impacted their understanding of
the story and its themes of racism. So, if I could teach the lesson again, I would try to find the time for discussion of
the text, or at least a discussion of one of the character’s use of racist language so that students could have a
better understanding of the text. In my conference with Mr. Rea, we decided to dedicate Monday to this
discussion. Additionally, I found that many of my students have forgotten how to write thematic statements with
universal ideas (this is something we’ve discussed a lot previously), so if I could teach the lesson again, I would at
least provide some more instruction around writing thematic statements. I would also provide students with some
sentence frames so that some of the difficulty of the skill would be lifted. This way, students would be able to reach
the objective more effectively and I wouldn’t just be relying on their memory of previous lessons.

Evidence: Where possible, provide one piece of evidence that you believe
Essential Element demonstrates your performance relative to the Quality, Consistency or
Scope of each element.
1.A.1: Subject Matter Knowledge - I gave extensive explanations on ways vocabulary words work within the

1.A.4: Well-Structured Lessons
1.B.2: Adjustments to Practice
2.A.3: Meeting Diverse Needs
2.B.1: Safe Learning Environment
2.D.2: High Expectations
context of example sentences, as well as dissecting prefixes, suffixes, and
context clues to help my students on their quiz.
- I provided some important universal ideas that students did not include
in the Menti word cloud such as racism, hatred, and cruelty.
- I constructed my lesson with upcoming assessments in mind by
prioritizing vocabulary review and writing thematic statements.
- I used multiple forms of technology in the lesson, including a Menti word
cloud, a Writer’s Notebook on Google Classroom, and a Kahoot!
- When I realized we were low on time, I made the decision to prioritize
vocabulary review over discussion of the story because I knew that our
vocab review might be the only studying some of my students will do.
- After, Mr. Rea and I discussed a plan to push off the unit test to the
following Wednesday instead of the Tuesday so that I can dedicate
Monday’s class to discuss the story and review writing thematic
statements, since students’ understanding of these two topics needs more
work.
- One student did not have her Chromebook to complete the Menti, the
Writer’s Notebook, and the Kahoot! so I allowed her to use her phone
instead.
- I provided an audio recording of the text while projecting the pdf and
having students have the physical text in front of them, giving multiple
ways to access the text.
- I had students play a hands-on Kahoot! Game to review vocabulary,
which was particularly helpful for my students with kinesthetic
preferences.
- I emphasized to students that I am looking for their own ideas and
creative thinking in the Writer’s Notebook, and when one student shared
an idea he had written about, I applauded his creative thinking, though
there may not be textual evidence to support his reading.
- I often said “I see where you’re coming from and I like the way we are
thinking about the ways these words work” when students chose common
errors in the Kahoot! Game in order to create a safe culture of error
- I emphasized the importance of effort when writing entries in the
Writer’s Notebook, as opposed to inherent skill or intelligence.