Lesson Plan Reflection April 4: ELA

What was the greatest strength of the lesson as you planned and executed it?

The greatest strength of my lesson was the engagement. Majority of the students were
engaged and excited to write/research on their animal. I was also impressed with the work A
did as she was able to understand and write a few sentences in English. Additionally, I was
impressed with D’s work as he added lots of relevant details to his paragraph graphic organizer
when he normally struggles with this.

What was an area for improvement in the lesson as planned?

I could have planned better for the transition of the laptops to Mr. C. I should have
watched the time better or set an alarm so that all the laptops were back in the cart by 12:30.

I should have kept a better eye on J. Closer to the end of the lesson, I noticed J did
nothing on his paper. This meant he was not using the laptop correctly. Next time, I need to
ensure I go to him to ask if he needs help. Sometimes if students aren’t doing the work, it is
because they don’t understand. Maybe if I sit down and work with him one-on-one, it would
help him be successful. In addition, next time I would only allow him to use informational books
to gather his information so that he does not have the opportunity to waste time on the laptop.

I also could have made sure to check in more on A, D and L. Although they were working
well, I only got to them once. Next time, I could use the back table and pull-out A, L, J and D so
that they were together and I could easily help them.

How was your learning goal reflected in the lesson and activity?

My learning goal for this lesson was for students to add relevant details to their
paragraph. For the last few classes, students have been learning about relevant details. We first
learned what they were, did an activity where we cut and glued notes, identified irrelevant
details in paragraphs, and created relevant details using topic sentences and prompts. This
culminated into today’s lesson where students added relevant details to their hamburger
graphic organizer. Since some students were not here for the initial research process and some
students needed more information so they were able to use informational books and laptops to
gather information. Students who had finished their 3 paragraphs could move onto creating
their informational book.

The goal for the whole unit is for students to learn how to create paragraphs. During
their writing with myself and Mrs. W, I noticed that students were about what paragraphs were
and what a paragraph entailed. As a result, I decided to do an informational writing unit where
students learn to write paragraphs by writing about an animal from Canada. To make the
learning more engaging and interesting, I decided that they would create their own
informational book so that they weren’t just writing an essay.
How was the closure of your lesson successful in reinforcing the desired learning
outcome/objective

The closure of my lesson was not as successful as I planned. I became flustered due to
putting the laptops away and didn’t do what I had planned. What I should have done is
reviewed with the class one more time what relevant details are and why we use them and
then ask for student examples. This would have better reinforced the learning objective for the
class.