PDS Reflection

I taught my lesson at in my 2^nd grade PDS site classroom on how people grow or change. We are currently on a chapter that talks about plants and people and how both grow and change. In this lesson we first read from the textbook and had a group discussion on growth, I then transitioned to having the students go through my pictures and help me recognize how we change. We had the students bring in two pictures of themselves, one younger picture and an older picture. The students them compared the two pictures on a poster and they are going up in the hallway.

The strength of my lesson was engagement. My students all day were asking me when we were going to teach science and when we would get to do an activity with the pictures we brought in. The students were ready for my lesson when I finally called them to the living room or circle time area with their textbooks. My students also were very excited to look through my old photos and getting to compare those. I think it this was a great way to engage the students because they are just as excited to see something you have as they are for their own photos. This lesson also was easily relatable to the students. I had no trouble coming up with questions to ask the students during the lesson.

An area of improvement that I am overall working on in PDS and during this lesson was classroom management. This includes classroom behaviors, transitions to and from activities and within the lesson, and clear directions for the independent part of the activity. I did ok with managing student behavior. There weren’t many problem behaviors besides chatting during the individual part, which we were ok with as long as the students were still being productive. We use class dojo in our room for positive and negative behaviors as the PBIS in our building. We are also working as a class on transition between subjects so I used that when we transitioned to the carpet and back to our seats afterwards. I feel that classroom management was something that we haven’t fully taught and explored as soon to be teachers and I have heard from a lot of different people that it is something that we are all focusing on as student teachers because we don't want their to be a gap in that area during our first year of teaching especially because it is going to help us get through that first year. I have been working on this by using class dojo more often and finding other ways to get points in the class and work towards a certain goal together. Another way I want to improve this is by exploring different means of classroom management. I want to work on giving more clear directions during my activity. I don't mind answering questions from students while they are doing individual work but I noticed that I was getting the same questions over and over and had to get the whole classes attention again and restate or give new directions which I know isn’t bad I just want to lessen the frequency of those instances. The best way to do this is to include those steps and think about questions the students might ask and put those in my lesson plans, which will again get better in time. Overall, my classroom management just needs some more experience to grow.

My students were very interested and motivated during this lesson. We asked the students to bring in their pictures and work hard on their final products so that the finished products could be hung in the hallway. We also copied some of the student’s pictures so that they wouldn't ruin some of the pictures with glue if the parents wanted their children’s photos back. As I said before the students were asking all morning when we were going to do science because they wanted to share their photos. I knew that students would want to share their photos with the people next to them so I included a time in my lesson where the students would share their project with another student before turning it in. I think I would also let students show their friends in the first few minutes of class so that the temptation to take out the photos and get distracted by them is taken away. Another reason I thought my students were particularly interested is because when I told students we were going to do a practice one first with my pictures several of the students gasped and got excited that I was going to show them some of my own photos. My teacher thought this was a good idea too and said she wished she had brought in her own photos too. I think sharing your personal life can sometimes really help the students relate to you and open up communication in the classroom. Overall the motivation and the interest in the lesson were very high.

I’d say my knowledge on the topic was decent. I read the passage in the book prior to lesson planning and I designed the lesson around the pages in the book. I could’ve researched more and done more as far as in the future what it would look like for students, but I believe that could also be a lesson extension. I think it was hard for students to come up with different ways that they have changed. I think my organization was good for this lesson because I created a lesson plan and then re-wrote it before teaching it to ensure that I was thinking on track and knew what part of my book was coming next. I find that this really helps me think through my lesson and remember what is really important for me to remember and for the students to know before I go on teaching the lesson.

Lastly, I think the students met my objectives perfectly and the checklist I made for the finished student products and all the students were checked off in the major categories. I think the students also were able to really explore the different types of changes in their own lives ,which made the overall concept of growth more exciting and relatable.

Exceed: I exceeded the word limit and included personal goals from PDS.