Adrianna Creighton

EDUC 359

August 30, 2020

Mini-Lesson Reflection

● As a teacher, what was your biggest challenge while planning the lesson?

○ As a teacher, my biggest challenge while planning this lesson was working with

two peers who were not early education majors. It was difficult to come up with a

topic that we all could easily do and we were on different pages when it came to

instruction. When we first met, I gave some simple ideas that would be a

kindergarten lesson, but they wanted to do a more advanced lesson for a fifth or

sixth-grader. Although I was not on the same page at first, we ended up with a

lesson we all agreed on.

● As a teacher, what challenges did you face when trying to teach your lesson/content to

the class?

○ The hardest part of teaching my silent lesson to the class was not saying any

positive phrases when they got the correct answer. We have been repeatedly

taught the importance of encouraging students when they answer correctly, and

not being able to verbally say positive affirmations was difficult. There were

many times that I would go to say “good job” and I couldn’t which was the

biggest challenge for me.

● What did you do to “overcome” these challenges?

○ To overcome that challenge I used different hand signals to portray what I wanted

to say. I would point to certain students when they raised their hands to answer

the question silently asked and give a thumbs up with a firm head nod when they

got to question correctly. I quickly learned that there were other signals I could

act out to relay the message of what I was trying to say to the class.

● As a teacher, how did this activity simulate trying to instruct one or more ELL students in

your classroom? How did you use "language" in your instruction?

○ This activity showed me how hard it is to teach an ELL student. It showed me

how ELL students need to be taught in a different way since they do not

understand the native language of the classroom. The only spoken language that

occurred in my lesson was when we said the objective in french. Other than the

objective we used pictures, hand signals, and acting out what we wanted the

students to do.

● As a student, what did you rely on most to comprehend what was being taught?

○ The thing I relied on most to comprehend what was being taught in other lessons

was the use of hand movements and pictures. I knew if I was doing the correct
 action or got the right answer by the way the “teachers” moved and gestured.

Since pictures are universal, even though another language was being spoken I

still knew what they were talking about since I saw the picture on the PowerPoint.

● As part of the "class", how can you relate this activity to the experience of ELL students

in an English speaking classroom?

○ When acting as the class, I can sympathize with ELL students and the struggles

they face daily. It was very difficult to understand what the “teachers” wanted me

to do when they first said it and it took multiple tries for me to perform the

wanted action. I can understand how confusing it would be for ELL students to be

in a classroom where they are relying on visual cues to tell them what to do.

● Overall, what do you think was the purpose of this activity?

○ I believe that the purpose of this activity was to show me how difficult ELL

students have it in the classroom. It is important as a future teacher to learn how

to effectively teach an ELL student and the first step in during that is to

understand what it feels like to be in their shoes.