Harlee Gogas

Professor Reilly
EDUC 359
29 August 2016
Mini Lesson Reflection
1. What was the biggest challenge you faced while planning the lesson?
a. My group easily decided our language and topic for the assignment. Nonetheless, the
biggest challenge that my group faced while planning the lesson was my schedule
because even though we all are enrolled in the same education courses, I also work
during majority of my time not in class. Another obstacle we had was that only one
member of our group could speak and read fluent Pig Latin, which was our language of
choice. Three out of the four members of my group had to learn Pig Latin before our
lesson.
2. What was the biggest challenge you faced while teaching the lesson?
a. Despite the fact that my group learned how to speak Pig Latin to some degree, most of us
found it to be challenging to actually read it in front of the class. Reading in a different
language proved to be our biggest challenge.
3. What did you rely on the most during your instruction to overcome these challenges?

a. As a group we relied heavily on reading what we believed was the correct pronunciation
and hoping it was correct. Our group probably did not pronounce every word as we
should have.
4. Was communication with your students easier or more difficult than you originally thought?
a. Communication with our students was slightly more difficult than I had originally
thought. I assumed that some students would know the language, but it appeared that
majority of the class had not been exposed to Pig Latin prior to our lesson. In my opinion,
our lesson was probably the most difficult for the students to grasp, because it was in a
language they had never seen, opposed to Spanish which some students have probably
been exposed to before.
5. Do you feel you used co-teaching as effectively as you could have?
a. I believe that my group used co-teaching as effectively as we could have under the
circumstances we were put under. One member of our group can speak and read this
language as if it were normal English. The rest of the group has a basic understanding of
the language. We each took turns instructing the class, which was our mode of coteaching.
6. Do you feel you achieved your objective? How can you be sure you did or didnt?
a. The main idea of the assignment was to construct a lesson with one clear objective and
then assess the students on this objective. My group did have an objective, which was
Today we will learn how to make pizza! In addition, we assessed the students on this

objective via a small comprehension quiz at the end of the lesson. During the lesson, the
students had a difficult time following along because a substantial amount of the class
was probably trying to understand the language and not focusing on the subject. Majority
of the class was very confused for our assessment because they did not grasp most of the
information being that it was in a different language. Regardless of my group having an
objective and an assessment, the class most likely did not learn too much from the lesson
itself. The subject we chose was one that everyone already knows, which is how to make
a pizza. The students could probably tell you this information without our lesson, but if
the subject had been something they had never seen, then they probably would have been
very confused and would ultimately fall behind in a school setting.
7. As a student of other groups lessons, what was the biggest challenge you faced?
a. As a student of the other groups lessons, the biggest challenge that I faced was grasping
the information being said in another language. Each lesson had a different perspective of
a language and subject. In particular, the lesson that was given on mathematics in Spanish
was particularly confusing for me. Despite the fact that I understand the concept of the
information they chose to teach, it was difficult to follow along being that the teacher had
spoken so quickly and eloquently in Spanish.
8. As a student, what did you rely on most to comprehend what was being taught?
a. As a student, I relied on my prior knowledge to grasp what was being taught. In many
cases I relied on visual aids and hand gestures in order to comprehend the instruction. If
the lessons were on information that I had not been exposed to before, I would have been

completely lost and frustrated. The lessons were a good way to portray how a teacher and
an English Language Learner (ELL) might feel under similar heightened classroom
circumstances.