Part VIII: Reflection, Self-Evaluation, & Professional Development Whole Class Reflection on Showcase Lesson I taught my showcase lesson

on November 14, 2013. There was twenty-eight students present, ten of which have an IEP. The class in which I taught in is an inclusion class with those ten students. At the beginning of my clinical, I was informed about their learning disabilities. These students require more time to take notes and a few them cannot think and write at the same time. These students require materials to be read to them and often require their special education teacher to take notes for them. My learning objective for this lesson was: After listening to and taking notes on a PowerPoint lecture, reading slave codes pre-Civil War, and watching a short video on the growth of the abolitionist movement, students should be able to act as an abolitionist in order to write a letter to the governor of South Carolina explaining why these codes are unfair and what should be done about them. While I was making this lesson objective and planning assessments, I knew that writing would be a challenge for these students with IEPs. However, I felt confident that I could help them write it by allowing the class to make an outline on the board and an example letter in which I would keep up for the remainder of the class. In order to help these students meet my learning objective, we made a class letter that I kept up on the board while they were assigned to write their own letters. After grading the letters, I found that the example and the outline on the board help these students put their thoughts into order. It also aided in their spelling and ability to write on their own. Overall, the students performed at 90% accuracy with some grammar and spelling errors. However, the students tend to think a lot in presentism which is something they will have to work on. If I were to teach this lesson again, I would be sure to inform the students what presentism is. When teaching this lesson, students said that African-Americans were slaves

solely based on their skin color which is not accurate. Students were thinking to more of the Civil Rights Movement than they were pre-Civil War. If I were to teach this again, I would teach them to understand the difference between the Civil War and the Civil Rights Movement and racism. Individual Reflection: The most successful student in this activity was Student 26. Student 26 is a very lively, energetic student. He loves history and expresses his love of history often. Student 26 is always the first to participate in classroom discussions and tend to answer all the questions asked by the instructor. He is a very bright student but it is often overlooked because he is in an overall low performing classroom. Student 26 is always engaged in the classroom and never complains when given work to do. He prefers to work in partners and has a tendency to talk instead of work. However, he is always the first or second student finished with his work every lesson. In this lesson, Student 26 performed exceptional in his post-assessment exercise. Student 26 wrote a very logical letter, with correct formatting that mentioned three reasons as to why he is joining the abolitionist movement. Student 26 met the learning objective with 100% accuracy. The lowest scoring student in the classroom was Student 28. He is an inclusion student and has troubles reading and writing. He has an extensive vocabulary but his disability limits his ability to write what he wants to say on paper. He is an outgoing student. He is not afraid to speak up when he is 100% sure he knows the answer. He tends to ask his special education teacher questions before raising his hand and answering a question. In this lesson, he performed high in the pre and during assessments. His only downfall was the post-assessment. I believe the student performed badly on the letter, not because he did not understand the material, I am quite sure he understood the material, but because he simply could not put his thoughts into words. If I

taught another lesson that incorporated letters, I would allow him to take it home and work on it as well. If he would have had more time to complete the assignment, I believe he would have scored exceptionally well. Student 27 is an average performing student for the class that she is in. However, if she were in a higher level class she would be considered a low performing student. Student 27 has an outgoing personality. She is very kind and friendly with her fellow peers. She speaks up often in class but also tends to be shy when no one else is answering the question either. She always does her work to the best of her ability but she always next to last to finish. She takes her time to complete her work. However, Student 27 has an issue with her spelling and grammar. Student 27 scored lower on his post-assessment then her other two-assessments because of that. She misspelled 4 or more words. However, she was able to think beyond what she had been taught during the lesson. She brought up staph infection from getting beat and we did not speak about that in class. She is able to think outside the box but she has a hard time spelling it. If I were to teach this lesson again, I would encourage students to try and spell words correctly, especially since this is an eighth grade class. I would encourage the students to ask me for help if they do not know how to spell a word or to look in a dictionary.

Reflections on 4 Additional Lessons: I taught my first lesson on Thursday, September 26, 2013. This lesson was a research based lesson on Carolina Pirates. The learning objective for this lesson was: L.O.1 Students will be able to distinguish among important figures of history (pirates) and their effect on the economy of South Carolina as a newly formed colony. L.O.2 Students will be able to write a paragraph on a Pirate, assigned to them by the instructor, based off of computer research done in

the lab and the PowerPoint given by the instructor. The students were broken up into partners and were taken to the lab to complete a research based paragraph. The students were given a Pirate name and directed to the website: www.thepiratemuseum.com. The students were instructed to read the overview and then read the biography of their pirate. The students were asked to write down three interesting facts about their pirate, where they pirated, and when they pirated and write it into a paragraph. However, this lesson did not go very smoothly. The students simply plagiarized their paragraphs word from word from the website. If I were to teach this lesson again, I would have them research and then write their paragraphs next class. I think this would help them to have to think about the information instead of looking at a computer screen while he/she wrote. I taught my second lesson on Thursday, October 24th on Establishing a United States Government. The learning objective for this lesson was: L.O.1 Students will be able to identify the four members of the 1787 Constitutional Convention from South Carolina. L.O.2 Students will work in groups to form understandings of how the Three-Fifths Compromise and the Great Compromise led to the ratification of the United States Constitution and the difficult task the delegates faced when determining how to count slaves for purposes of government representation. This lesson was my most thought-out lesson and was meant to be an extremely fun lesson for the students. The purpose of this lesson was for students to understand the roles that the delegates had at the Constitutional Convention when they decided to scrap the Articles of Confederate and create the US Constitution. After the lecture, students were broken up into states and the student was instructed that he/she would be a delegate for that state at the Constitutional Convention. The activity for this lesson was to allow students to see the difficulties faced by the delegates when determining population size and slave count. However,

after I broke the students up proportionately to the size at the Constitutional Convention, the special education teacher decided to take her students back to the classroom. I had to rework the population percentages on the spot which took an extra five minutes that the students could have had to work. If I were to teach this lesson again, I would collaborate with the special education teacher and ask her to allow the students to complete the activity in the classroom because I had full confidence in them that they would be able to complete the activity. I taught my third lesson on Thursday, October 31, 2013. The learning objective for this lesson was: After listening to a PowerPoint lecture as well as hearing a primary account from a former slave, and reading a newspaper article on the cotton gin students should be able to write a journal entry as if they were a slave on a plantation in the Antebellum South. In their journals, students should reference the treatment of African-American slaves pre-Civil War as well as the cotton gin and how it institutionalized slavery in the Deep South. This lesson was a lot of fun to teach. The PowerPoint I made for this lesson contained a lot of imagery which the students really enjoyed. I also brought in real cotton for the students to pass around and look it. The students really enjoyed the seeing the cotton. After I had finished the PowerPoint lecture for this lesson and the students were working on their post-assessment, a student walked in late. I gave him my lecture notes with the PowerPoint and had him read over it. I then sat down with him to make sure he understood the assignment before asking him to also complete the post-assessment. He did well by looking at my lecture notes. I really enjoyed teaching this lesson and would love to teach it again. Students performed at 90% accuracy in this lesson with the only flaw being their ability to use proper grammar and spelling. The fourth lesson I taught was on November 12, 2013 on the War of 1812. The learning objective for this lesson was: After taking notes on a PowerPoint lecture, watching two videos,

and listening to the Star Spangled Banner, students should be able to write 1-2 sentences summarizing the importance of the War of 1812. This lesson was the lesson I was least prepared for. I did not get to plan for this lesson as long as I would have liked to. The lesson was also not enough and the class finished their work twenty minutes early. In those twenty minutes, the students got out of control. One student began throwing another students notebook and was using inappropriate words in the classroom. My cooperating teacher had to step in when this happened as I had no authority to punish the student. The students understood the material presented in the lesson, however, if I were to teach this lesson again I would add more material to it. The War of 1812 for the purposes of South Carolina History is not enough to do an entire lesson on. In the future, I will either lengthen the amount of information I give to the students or add more material all together. This was my least favorite lesson to teach. The students also had questions that I could not answer and I wish I would have known the answer to them.

Reflection for Professional Development: I believe I was a fair teacher during this clinical. I believe I acted in a very professional manner inside and outside of the classroom. I believe that my classroom management skills are good and that I got along well with my cooperating teacher and my students. I also got along well with the other eighth grade teachers at Westview Middle. I did realize that I needed to add more personal stories to my lectures. Instead of making my lecture fact based, I need to learn to tell history in a story manner that way my students will be more engaged in the material. Another thing that I realized that I do in my showcase lesson is that I move my arms around a lot. I do not like that I do this. I need to find a way to keep my hands busy so that I will not wave my arms around while I lecture. I also believe that I need to work on finding better questions to ask for my

during-assessments. Some of my questions tended to repeat myself and that is something I definitely need to work on. Overall, I am happy with this clinical experience and I am glad that I got the cooperating teacher that I did. Mrs. Benjamin helped me grow a lot in this clinical and I appreciate her allowing me to make mistakes and come up with the materials I want to teach on my own. I gained a lot of experience in this clinical.