Lesson Evaluation: Video 1

Lesson Evaluation: Video #1

On September 13^th, 2016 I completed my first official lesson on video. The subject matter surrounding this lesson was Using Blind and Modified Contour Lines, and for this lesson I did provided teacher samples of the assignment but I also conducted two separate demonstrations for the students to help them in the understanding of both the Blind Contour Assignment and the Modified Contour Assignment, and the techniques associated with each. At the end of this evaluation, I will be providing the directions of the assignment to help ensure a better understanding of what the expectations were of the students during their time of independent practice.

1.)   What are my strengths?

·      As I lookback on my lesson introduction and demonstration, I have found myself quite pleased with the overall outcome of the video its self. Truthfully, I forgot I was even being recorded during this entire process, and I think that actually benefited me greatly in the sense of not feeling like I was being critiqued or grade on the lesson by anyone. When it came to giving the actual lesson and the introduction, I felt that my students were very captivated throughout the intro and the demonstration, which can be a very had thing to accomplish when it comes to having your students watch you give demonstration for twenty minutes instead of them actually just diving into the assignment. With this, I did feel that having them watch be throughout the demonstration really solidified what the assignment expectations for them were and understand better how to achieve those expectations through the techniques I was demonstrating to them. Throughout the entire lesson, I personally felt very confident in myself and how I executed the lesson and I felt that that was something that could also be seen within the video itself as well. It also made me feel incredibly confident when at the end of my lesson, my cooperating teacher took the time to be very complimentary about how well the lesson went overall in her eyes as well. She also noted my confidence as well, which I feel is a great strength that not nly did I feel confident in myself but that my cooperating teacher was able to note that same confidence in me as well. Another strength I feel that I had was that I had teacher samples ready for my students to view. They were not strictly relying on the sample of my demonstration but they could also see the final outcome of the project with my samples as well. My hope was that them seeing the finished pieces within the teacher samples would allow them to feel confident in their own works they would be completing with this assignment as well.

2.)  In what areas do I need to improve my instructional delivery?

·      I feel that the areas I need to improve my instructional delivery is to attempt to refrain from using the phrase “um… or ahh…” when delivering the introduction and the instructions throughout the demonstration. This wasn’t something that I did too much or overly often but when I went back and viewed the video, I was able to note a few different instances where it occurred. I know that using such phrases are fairly common in today’s society, but they are something the I feel really should be refrained from being used within the classroom as an educator because they may be perceived by the students as the educator possibly not knowing what they were talking about or trying to find filler words throughout their instruction or demonstration. In the instances that I found myself using these phrases, they were at moments when I was trying to find or decide on the best words or phrases to help in my explanation of the lesson and the demonstration. This is a weakness that I believe can be mended throughout my student teaching experience, and I’m sure will be a weakness that I will note in future lessons as well, but it is also a weakness that has made me develop the goal of making sure that I a providing clear and concise instructions and expectations to my students, and I believe will help me achieve that goal by addressing the weakness now. Another weakness that I personally felt within myself during this lesson was making sure that I covered all the key points of the lesson and even the smaller side notes of the lesson as well. Although when I went back and viewed the video, I found that I did cover all the needed points, during the actually lesson, I did find myself second guessing whether or not I had remembered to cover one particular aspect of the lesson or if I had already mentioned a key point and was mistakenly mentioning it twice.  

3.)  How will I improve my teaching effectiveness?

·      To help myself refrain from continually using filler words like um or ahh, I want to make sure that I am fully prepared in my lesson. Now, with that being said, I don’t meant to say that I wasn’t prepared in this lesson, what I mean is to outline how exactly I plan on phrasing the directions or the introduction of the lesson by organizing my thoughts. I want to help ensure that however I am meaning to teach or whatever the lesson may be, that I am able to remain on track with organized thoughts and able to refer back to how I would like to phrase something through my organization. Now, obviously this is something that can be conducted in a variety of ways from note cards, to a slide show with electronic notes or even printed off notes, it also could be done by means of having a more detailed lesson plan or rubric for myself to help aide in the organization as well. Although there are a variety of ways that I utilize to help in improving my effectiveness of my instructional delivery, I think it would be best to try a few different ways of organization, to help ensure that I am maintaining comfortable and confident in my instructional presentation. I believe that another way of dealing with the weakness of ensuring I am covering all the material and key points of the lesson along with being mindful of not accidently repeating myself throughout the lesson could be utilizing different organizational methods like I stated previously. One thing that I have learned not only through the beginning weeks of my student teaching experience but also my field experiences that have taken place during my actual school time at the university is that organization is your best friend as not only a student but especially as a teacher. Being mindful of my organization throughout my delivery of the lesson and demonstration will help both myself as an educator and my students in their understanding of the lesson as well.

Lesson Assignment Directions:

Pure Contour Line Drawing:

1)    Find a place where you can be alone and uninterrupted for at least 20 minutes (set a timer if you think you won’t make it to 20 minutes)

2)   Place your sketchbook down in a position that feels comfortable

3)   You are going to draw your hand using pure contour lines. Arrange yourself so that your pencil is ready to draw on the paper

4)   Now turn all the way around to the opposite direction, gazing at the hand you will draw. Rest your hand or arm on something so that it doesn’t get tired.

5)    Find a pose for your hand that is somewhat complex. Not a flat hand….

6)   Very slowly move your eyes along the edge of your hand. As your eyes move also move your pecil point at the same slow pace, recording every variation of line, edge, wrinkle, etc. Try not to pick up your pencil, and DO NOT LOOK until you are finished with the drawing (at least 20 minutes later…) They will seldom resemble a hand when they are finished, but you are recording the importance of all contour lines

Modified Contour Line (Part 2)

1)    Arrange at least 20 minutes of uninterrupted time

2)   Sit comfortably, this time in the usual position. You are going to draw your own hand again. Arrange your hand in a complex position

3)   Begin drawing your hand by looking for all the important lines, where your hand bends, the wrinkles, two edges meet etc. (the ones you found during the pure contour part.) LOOK AT YOU HAND 90% OF THE TIME!!! Only glance at your paper briefly, once in a while. Try not to label the parts of your hand in your mind, just think of everything as types of lines

Professional Conference: Dr. Marcia Tate Workshop

Professional Conference: Dr. Marcia Tate Workshop

Although I am still in the beginning weeks of my student teaching experience, I have been lucky enough to attend a few different staff and policy meetings, along with an incredibly informative professional conference that was put on by Dr. Marcia Tate, prior to the official start of school, on August 23^rd, 2016.

During my time of attending the professional conference on Dr. Tate’s philosophies and educational practices, I was able to leave the conference feeling incredibly inspired and even more excited for my student teaching experience that was to come not too long after the conference. This particular conference was technically considered an in-service opportunity for the employees of Havre Public Schools, as many of the teachers and paraprofessionals in attendance were able to receive continuing education credits, but for me this was an opportunity to be able to participate in a professional conference that would actually be influential and impactful on my actual teaching habits and styles.

The conference its self was titled, “Shouting Won’t Grow Dendrites”; it was actually based off of one of Dr. Tate’s best-selling educational books with that same title. She also has other educational books titled “Worksheets Don’t Grow Dendrites and Preparing Children for Success in School and Life”. The purpose of the book is to provide educators with 20 alternative methods or  steps to help ensure a positive classroom environment, positive classroom management and active student participation in class.

With this conference or workshop as some referred to it, we spent the entire day learning different ways on how to approach our students and how to maintain positive classroom environment. Topics discussed throughout the conference ranged greatly from classroom management and classroom organizations (or even arrangement and decoration) to greeting students as the enter your classroom. I found the entire workshop to be incredibly informative but it was also a lot of fun for the participating educators.

Active participation was a key point throughout the workshop as it was continually pointed out to us that if we wanted our students to actively participate in our classroom we needed to just as proactive with them. One particular phrase that stood out to me that Dr. Tate used was, S.M.I.L.E. With this Dr. Tate reinforced the idea and concept that us educators could potentially be the only real advocate in our students lives and that because of this it is very important that we show our students that they are loved, the word S.M.I.L.E. then stands for “Show Me I’m Loved Every Day”.  As Dr. Tate used this phrase with us, she explained a few things about how we can do just that for our students but also why this is so important for our students as well; she explained that by acknowledging a student by positive comments, words of encouragement, positive reinforcement, and even greeting them as they enter the classroom and saying goodbye as they leave can make a big difference in their attitude and overall performance within the classroom. Dr. Tate continued to show and explain to us that some of our students will not have been shown any sort of love or positivity by the time they come to school in the morning, and because of that it is very important as their educators that we remember to positively acknowledge them because this could have an incredible lasting effect on them.

To help us better understand the lasting effect these actions or the lack of them can have on a student, Dr. Tate introduced us to the concept of Chronic Behavior Disorders. In this introductory unit, she helped us better understand a multitude of disorders, but she mostly focused on; Attention Deficit Disorder, Conduct Disorder, Oppositional Defiant Disorder, and Acute Stress Disorder. With each of these chronic behavior disorders, Dr. Tate explained to us how these different disorders may develop do to circumstances and environments students and children may experience at a young age, and that because of that, they are at extreme risk of potentially having aggressive or explosive behaviors that are associated with these different disorders.

To help with the approach of these different disorders, Dr. Tate explained a few different strategies that can be approached to help take advantage of how the brain best learns and how we can have these strategies benefit our students and lead them to success.  Here are the twenty different strategies she discussed and demonstrated with us.

1.)            Music

2.)            Movement

3.)            Visualization

4.)            Visuals

5.)            Reciprocal Teaching

6.)            Class Discussion

7.)            Writing

8.)            Story Telling

9.)            Games

10.)                Humor

11.)         Mnemonic Devices

12.)                Role Play

13.)               Metaphors, Analogies, and Similes

14.)               Graphic Organizers  

15.)                Drawing

16.)               Project Based Learning

17.)                Field Trips

18.)               Manipulatives

19.)               Technology

20.)              Work Study

With each of these different strategies, it is obvious that different ranges of these strategies would be used for different grade levels. Kindergartners would not use the same graphic organizers or games that would be used in a 9^th grade English class a vice versa, so it is just as important to use age appropriate strategies as it is to implement them within your own classroom as well.

Along with the implementation of these different strategies that Dr. Tate introduced to us, it is also important to establish an appropriate and adequate environment for learning and to create a proactive plan for classroom management as well. In the preparation for the establishment of a proper learning environment, Dr. Tate reminded us of a few things to consider when organizing our classroom and the overall environment as well. She reminded us that the five main areas to focus on when developing your classroom environment are color, music, lighting, aroma, and seating. Now, obviously there are certain things that we cannot control within our classroom environments as teachers, like florescent lighting being installed in our classrooms or the color of our classroom walls, but we can control the color of our educational boards and the colors associated with our room in general, we also can control whether or not we want to strictly utilize fluorescent lighting our if we would like to incorporate natural lighting or lamps into our classroom instead. Depending on school policy we all can control the aroma of our classroom as well, and whether or not we want to have more calming scents like vanilla and lavender or if we want higher energy smells like peppermint or citrus within our classroom instead. Dr. Tate also mention how the way we set up the seating arrangements of our classroom can also be impactful on our students’ learning, and that having a more flexible seating arrangement that allows some movement for students can be much more beneficial to their overall learning experience.

It was very enlightening to hear all of this from Dr. Tate because even though I don’t have my own official classroom yet, I now know of different ways to establish classroom management and how I can approach different situations or obstacles when it comes to ensuring my students’ success within and beyond my classroom and their personal growth as well. I found Dr. Tate’s workshop to be one of the best educational presentations and workshops that I have personally attended. I was very happy that I was able to participate in this in the week prior to beginning my student teaching experience because it made me really consider not only how I was/am going to work with my cooperating teacher, but how I was going to utilize our most likely different teaching styles to help ensure the overall success of the classroom and the personal success of the students. If I have the opportunity to attend another presentation or workshop by Dr. Tate, I will certainly be taking advantage of that opportunity. Even after talking with a few of the other teachers and paraprofessionals that attended the workshop, I discovered that essentially all of them left that workshop feeling very similar to myself was and that they were thoroughly impressed by the workshop as well, infact many of the teachers and paraprofessionals agreed that this was the most fun they had had with an inservice workshop in a long time and that they plan on utilizing the different strategies and topics discussed in their classrooms. I was very happy to hear all of this because that was something that I felt as well.

Along with this professional workshop by Dr. Tate, I have also attended a few different policy and staff meetings as well. These meetings have been for both the high school and the special education department since I am also working on my student teaching experience for special education as well.