Jessica Hopland 9/28/2020

Individual Reflection

The mini lesson went well overall. The activity and topic I chose were very engaging and
versatile. Allowing the audience participation in creating definitions for the two key terms is supported
by Constructivist Learning Theory. Students’ voices were validated by including their wording in the
comparison chart. The student also had a choice in topic about what they wrote their six word memoir
on. It was a low stakes assignment where students did not need to be concerned about the length or
grammar making it easily accessible to diverse learners, but still a great chance for students to express
themselves.
The presentation format also went well. It is an Adobe Spark scroll presentation that mimics the
addictive scroll of many social media sites. Student's can easily navigate the web page and reference
back to it later. It is an engaging platform that allows students to investigate topics that interest them
further. The padlet was another technological tool that went well and provided all students a great way
to participate without the pressure of being in the spotlight. Both tools were easy to navigate.
The main recommendations I received from peer feedback were improving the introduction and
leaving time to play the 6 Word Memoir Introduction video. I agree that sixth grade students would
need more support and clarity to understand the content clearly. If I presented the lesson again, It
would be helpful to include goals and objectives at the beginning to orient students. I would provide
more understanding by giving the students an opportunity to classify examples. This would not only help
them practice using the definitions, but also give them a way to pinpoint where more clarity might be
needed in their definition. The video would have added a needed break in lecture that might have given
the students more ideas and another explanation of the assignment.
The last reflection would be on teaching with zoom for the first time. I wasn't able to gage the
audience's understanding or interests during my presentation. While I was screen sharing I couldn't see
everybody's faces and reactions . In the future I would use the chat feature more. This would allow me
to check in on students during the presentation with the thumbs up or down feature to confirm their
understanding.
Presenting with zoom was a great learning experience. The lesson design was well thought out
and technology tools were well chosen. The main improvements are adding clarity in the introduction,
providing more examples, and using the videos I referenced.
Jessica Hopland 9/28/2020

Summary:
1) What went well in the lesson.
Adobe Scroll Presentation, Padlet, constructivism pedagogy, low stake engaging activity,
student participation, supports diverse learning
2) What could be improved upon if you were going to teach it again.
Clarity in Introduction, more examples, play video of six word memoir introduction
3) How you would alter instruction specifically in the future.
Remind students of base knowledge of narrative before lesson, State goals and objectives at
the start of the lesson, share examples of expressive and reflective writing then let students
classify examples and create their own examples, use the chat signal feature to gage
students' understanding with a thumbs up or down before continuing from the learning
material to the activity, practice screen share mode more to be familiar with how to paste
the link into the chat