Lesson Plan & Implementation:

Reflection and Analysis

College of Education
Childhood Education & Literacy Studies

Reflection is a critical process for supporting your growth and development

as a professional. At the end of each lesson, you should reflect on the
experience and analyze its effectiveness. This part of the process consists of
two parts: the reflection and the analysis.

In order to receive full credit your reflection and analysis must include
specific references to the video with time correlations. For this reason, it is
strongly suggested that you complete a chart as you watch your video with
the following headings and focus your viewing on the student learning goal
and/or teacher instructional goal.
Time Celebration/Struggle/Questio Claim about teaching
n: practice

6min. Students independently This proves that students

organized animals into learned the material from
vertebrates and the previous day and fully
invertebrates without any understand the difference
instruction. between vertebrates and
invertebrates

10min Students did not follow When working with this

directions while creating
their backbone model
group of students, lessons
are much more successful
when I go step by step
slowly with the students
rather then give them a list
of directions and expect
them to follow.

You do not have to answer all of these questions, choose 3-4 and
answer thoroughly. They are meant to prompt your thinking. Your
reflection should make sure to address both reflection and analysis.

The Reflection: The reflection component should make you think about your
overall impressions and feelings that you had. You also might address
something that surprised you or something that made you pause.
 Questions to consider in your reflection:
1. What aspects of your lesson were implemented differently than you planned?
Why did that happen?
2. If you were going to teach this lesson to the same group of students, what would
you do differently? Why? What would you do the same? Why?
If I were to teach this lesson to the same group of students, I would
be sure to give them very explicit directions to make sure that they
understand and build the model of the backbone correctly. This
group of students tends to need more concrete directions and
descriptions because they are much more concrete learners. I
would do majority of this lesson the same. Building the backbone
model and having students explore their own backbones in order to
understand vertebrate animals allows them to see how it relates to
things that they experience every day. The students were engaged
and able to learn in a variety of ways, which appeals to a variety of
students as well.
3. What surprised you in your lesson?
4. Describe an instance or particular encounter that comes to mind. Why did you
pick that instance? What is so perplexing about that particular moment?
5. What connections can you make to your lesson today from your coursework, the
literature, and any previous lessons or experiences?
During this science lesson, which was from the National Geographic
curriculum book, I was able to see the importance of incorporating
outside materials along with the given curriculum in order to
engage students and help them learn in a way that works best for
them. I combined this lesson with elements and HOT questions
from the AIMS curriculum as well as my own animal sorting cards to
help student learn about vertebrates and invertebrates. From out
coursework, we have always been told that it is so important to
incorporate lessons and ideas from many resources that we know
our students will like. Although it is important to follow the
curriculum, supplementing material with other resources allows for
creativity and more effectiveness within the lessons.

The Analysis: The analysis part addresses the lessons effectiveness to

what extent did the students meet the objectives stated in your lesson plan
and how do you know? Make a claim about student learning and support it
with evidence that you gathered from the lesson.

General questions to consider in your analysis:

1. To what extend did the students learn what was intended? How do you know? As
part of your answer, please indicate:
a. In what ways were your teaching methods effective? How do you know?
b. In what ways were your activities effective? How do you know?
c. In what ways were the instructional materials effective?
d. How did any special considerations of accommodations affect the lesson?
2. Identify an individual or group of students who had difficulty in todays lesson.
How do you account for this performance? How will you help this (these)
student(s) achieve the learning objectives?
One student who had particular difficulty with this lesson was a
student who was not listening and was busy talking during the
entire lesson. Because this student was not paying attention, they
were behind when creating the model and also did not fully
understand what the model represented. This is a pattern that we
have seen with this student many times. Our next step with this
student is to have a conversation about the importance of paying
attention and also move this students seat so he does not get
distracted by his friends in class. I will help this student by
frequently checking in to make sure this student is following along.
I will also make sure that this student is working with positive
classmates when doing group work in class so he is accountable for
his work.
3. Identify an individual or group of students who did especially well in this lesson
today. How do you account for this performance?
4. Based on what happened in this lesson, what are the next steps? What do you
plan to teach next to this class? Be sure to explain how you will use information
from this evaluation in future lesson planning.