Professional Goal Evidence

Weekly Reflections:

Week Two (when my goal began):

I had a lot of problems this week with ensuring that I had enough time for my conclusions in my
lesson. I was still getting the timing down in my lessons and really struggled with making
enough time to have a quality conclusion.

I did try the KWL strategy or the Knowledge, What we want to know, and what we want to
Learn strategy. I found that it was an effective way to structure the lesson and help the students
reflect on the lesson and see where they started and where they finished throughout a lesson.

I shared my goal with my TA and my UC, and we discussed how often conclusions can function
as a quick check in at the end of a lesson to ensure that students understood what we wanted
them to. Often conclusions can be a 1–2-minute check in.

Week Three:

I started to realize this week that not every conclusion had to be a complicated ten-minute
process. I started to use a lot more questioning strategies to finish my lessons and asked
questions that I knew would get the students thinking about the learning that they did.

I asked questions surrounding what they learned today i.e., what do we think are the three most
important things we learned today? Questions also included questioning about specific terms,
reviewing what was important to the students' understanding. I also tried using the 3Ws strategy,
which is asking the students what, so what, and now what. The questions were also related to
objectives. I experimented with sharing objectives with students beforehand and seeing how they
connected to it afterwards. I did that specifically when discussing the writing process with
students. We talked about the process beforehand, as the lesson went on, and at the end of the
lesson. I found that it helped the students connect to the process and understand the importance
of each part of the writing process.

As well, I have discovered that a lot of the final assignments I use work as ways to incorporate
conclusions or can function as the conclusion of the lesson. I think designing a quality
assessment aids with creating a quality conclusion.

My ability to time lessons continues to develop and I find that I have more time to ensure there is
a conclusion. However, there are still times where my conclusion feels rushed.
Week Four:

I have done a lot of work in creating an introduction to my lessons that include connections to
real life and involve student relevance. I found that including this in my introduction aids me in
creating a quality conclusion.

My concluding questions often bring back what we discussed at the beginning of the lesson in
relation to the student’s lives. For example, in a lesson about patterning and attributes I asked
students to think about ugly Christmas sweaters, and patterns they might see during the holiday
seasons. That opened students to learn throughout the lesson and aided me in asking my
conclusion lessons.

I also tried using the snowball formative assessment. I was very pleased with the results and saw
how well students connected to it. It acted as a good conclusion to the lesson since students had
to recall what they learned about attributes to create the pattern on their snowball. Then it also
acted to assess extending the pattern as every time students uncrumpled the paper snowball they
picked they had to extend the pattern that they found.

Week Five:

With the success of my snowball assessment, I used a similar thing to test place value knowledge
and students’ ability to associate place value with the physical manipulatives. Students did an
exit slip where they had to draw out the manipulatives that would physically represent a number
that I wrote out on the board.

I have found that I have struggled to find quality conclusions that do not involve writing so the
practicum helped me to find great questioning strategies and ways to incorporate drawings so
that the conclusion can be accessible to everyone in the classroom.

I also have tried experimenting with having specific learning goals written before we start to
learn. I often do it as keys that students must unlock to leave the lesson or clues that they must
follow to solve the mystery. That way it is fun and engaging for the students but

I have also learned that as much as it is important to draw out what students have learned from
the lesson it is also important to question students on specific terms that they should be taking
away from the lesson. That way I can ensure that my lesson objectives that I have shared are met.
I have done some writing with the students and what I have found is that for some students it
takes a long time to get any writing from them.