Pausing to reflect is essential to continuous improvement of your practice. Taking time to process your thinking after any instructional event and analyzing the many decisions you made in the planning and implementation of your lesson are important. By thinking about these things and the impact they had on student learning, teachers can determine where to focus in making revisions and choose which parts of the lesson need continued instruction in the future. Reflecting on Teaching is component 4a in the Danielson Framework.
How do you reflect?
- Through collegial conversations?
- Journal writing?
- Examining student work?
- Conversations with students?
- Thinking about your teaching?
Reflecting with accuracy and being able to use what you learn in your future teaching is an acquired skill. Mentors, coaches, and principals can help you develop these skills through supportive and deep questioning. Over time, thinking both reflectively and self-critically while analyzing your instruction through the lens of student learning becomes a habit of mind, leading to improvement in teaching and learning.
The first element is ACCURACY.
As teachers gain experience, their reflections on practice become more accurate, corresponding to the assessments that would be given by an external and unbiased observer. Reflections are accurate and teachers can provide specific examples from a lesson to support their judgements.
The second element is USE IN FUTURE TEACHING.
If the potential of reflection to improve teaching is to be fully realized, teachers must use their reflections to make adjustments in their practice. As their experience and expertise increases, teachers draw on an ever-increasing repertoire of strategies to inform these adjustments.
The Danielson rubrics state the following for a teacher who is proficient in 4a:
The teacher makes an accurate assessment of a lesson's effectiveness and the extent to which it achieved its instructional outcomes and can cite general references to support the judgement. The teacher makes a few specific suggestions of what could be tried another time the lesson is taught.
A distinguished teacher offers specific alternate actions in their thoughtful reflection, complete with the probable success of different courses of action.
A shout out to the PBL collaboration and learning that took place this week in Madison! Thanks to Sarah, Courtney, Rachel, Lindi, Sarah, and Richelle! You'll get a chance to hear about their new learning and the fantastic projects they've planned this week!
This week's comment questions:
Reflect: what did you do this week that worked well for kids?
Why did it work?
What didn't work the way you had planned?
What will you do next week because of what you learned this week?
As a first year teacher, this year is all about reflecting and putting into practice what I learn from each teaching experience. With the Level 1 kiddos, we are doing self portraits. Each student works at different paces so at the beginning of the class I brought students who were ready for the next step to the carpet for a demo on cutting out the shape and gluing it to our sponge painted backgrounds. Students who were still working on their drawings had many questions and needed assistance, but at the same time others were finishing up that did not get the demonstration at the carpet. I asked for a volunteer who was taught from the first demonstration to go to the carpet and teach the second group the cutting and gluing steps. This was so wonderful to have students teaching students, and after I had a few more ask if they could also teach. This was also incredibly helpful in managing the needs of the students and making sure everyone got attention. The Level 2 students have been making ceramic bowls for an Empty Bowls project, and in the past students were losing or misplacing their work. Though each student bagged up their work with their names, many students could not find their bags and ended up having to start again. What I did last week was create boards with their names taped to them, about 12 to each board, so they could place their artwork right under their name and not fear it getting lost. I called up the students table by table to grab their artwork and my fear became a reality: "Ms. Worden, I can't find my art work. I put it right by my name and now it's gone." Luckily, I had some volunteers come in to make extra bowls as a preparation for those that this may happen to, but not enough were made to give every student one- so again, students were starting over. This week I called up 3 students at a time and monitored as they picked up their artwork. However, with 40 minutes of class, this takes 10 minutes out of work time, giving them maybe 20 minutes to work (with clean up being 10 minutes for clay). This did not fully resolve the problem, either, as some students claimed they put their work down and it is not longer there. This lead to a much deeper issue of taking others work, and the Level 2 students and I had many conversations about this. I opened up to the students asking what a solution would be and many of them said putting names on work is the best solution, though this was done and still there were issues. I would love to have each table have their own board for their artwork, but this would not work logistically with the number of board that would be needed (36) and the space to store them. I have been thinking about this problem and realize from the start, had I checked off every students work each day, then I would know who had what one day and then did not another- but since this time has passed, and this has happened 3 weeks in a row, after discussing it with the students we are finishing up the project and beginning a new lesson this coming week. Those who did not finish can come in during their recess and will have this coming week to do so. However, I feel that this problem has become larger and persisted because I did not check the progress of each student work from the start. Knowing this, giving a formative assessment to each student along the way would have maybe prevented this situation, and I hope in the future when doing this it will be avoided.
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