Reflection And Self Evaluation

Reflection and Self Evaluation Analysis and Instructional Decision Making: This lesson plan provides students with several opportunities to demonstrate their understanding and mastery of the content. The lesson provides students with two online activities, a group work exercise accompanied with a whole class discussion, and an additional blog assignment. I think students have more than adequate exposure to thematerial to produce several meaningful samples of understanding and comprehension. Similarly, all of the assignments and activities directly relate to the Core Learning Goals, Voluntary State Curriculum, INTASC Principles, Lesson Objectives, and MTTS standards which are all clearly stated in the lesson plan outline. By completing the assignments and activities the students are effectively achieving all of the requirements outlined in the curriculum goals, standards, objectives, and principles. Reflection on Effectiveness: This lesson would be extremely effective in an actual 9thgrade English class. However, in this particular setting, the students didn’t take the assignments and lesson seriously. The students seemed distracted and sidetracked with finishing their final reflections, completing final touches on their websites, and our last day of class. In an actual high school atmosphere this lesson would be well designed and cohesive. Since students will be expected to complete assignments for a grade, they will actively participate and engage in the activity. The PowerPoint, pretest, group work, and post test all follow aorganized and logical order so the class would have to participate to do well on the final assignment which is the blog post. I don’t think I would do anything differently; I think this lesson is well designed and tightly organized. Reflection on Future Instruction: Goal 1: In the future I would provide hand outs containing the website URL for the online quizzes and assignments. I think it was a little distracting having the only web address on the screen. I noticed that students had difficulty typing in the web address. Also, by distributing the URLs to the students the teacher would have an easier time helping the students correct the URL,and it would be easier for students to catch their own mistakes. Goal 2: Timing is always difficult to judge. Obviously in an actual 9thgrade classroom, the teacher would have longer than 15 minutes to give a lesson, but in this case our time limit was too short. My partner and I timed our PowerPoint presentation, but in the end it didn’t matter. In the future I would maybe edit out some of the material or omit one of the quizzes to make the presentation fit into the allotted time frame better.

Reflection on Technology Integration

I think that the students were more focused on the technology and not on the learning. I think the students had a lot going on with their final reflections, blogs, and websites that they were too distracted to really care about affect and effect. Obviously, in an actual classroom the students won’t have these types of distractions. In this case, the students made an effort to locate the quizzes and to watch our PowerPoint, but I don’t think they actually know the difference between affect and effect, which is at no fault to my partner and I. The technology was very seamless, cohesive, and effective. Without technology the lesson would be boring and extremely time consuming. The online quizzes are graded automatically so the students and teachers knew immediately what the quiz results were. The technology seemed to flow naturally because the PowerPoint displayed the links to the URLs so there wasn’t a choppy transition; it felt natural and organized. The technology easily contributed to the lesson because without it the lesson wouldn’t be as effective. The online quizzes were essential to the lesson. Since they were graded immediately, the students could easily see what they knew and didn’t know. Personally, when I took the quizzes I thought I knew the difference between affect and effect and my quiz results shocked me. The quizzes are a good way for students to correct their misconceptions associated with the terms, and it’s a good way for teachers to adapt instruction. If students fail the quizzes the teacher can spend more time on the subject, but if the students are passing, the teacher can move onto a different topic. Overall, the quizzes were a very important contribution to the lesson. I think the students realized why the technology is important. It is more beneficial for students to take a quiz and receive feedback immediately than if students takes a quiz and receive their scores a couple days later. Some of the students were shocked and impressed with their scores which can facilitate learning. Students can see what answers they got wrong and can understand why they missed those questions. This lesson targets visual and hands on learners. The majority of the class would benefit from this lesson because it provides a large, effective visual aid and several hands on activities that give immediate feedback. In an actual 9thgrade class, this lesson would benefit the majority of the students. This lesson could have been accomplished without the use of technology, but it would have taken a lot more time and energy. The use of technology made the lesson more effective and efficient. The PowerPoint presentation provided a visual for the students and the online quizzes provided instant feedback for the students as well as the teacher. The blog assignment was a good way to reinforce the content and it would be an effective tool for teachers to monitor and track student progress. I think the students participated because they were supposed to; not because they wanted to. I think their participation was weak due to the fact that they were also working on several other assignments; however in a real classroom setting the integration of technology would significantly benefit and facilitate learning.