Reflection on a Lesson Plan Taught

Virginia Teachers for Tomorrow

Intern Name: Bianca Palasthy

Subject of Lesson: SEL
Topic of Lesson: Self-esteem
Age/Grade of Students: 4th grade
Date of Lesson: 5/7/2024
Time/Length of Lesson: 30 minutes approx.

To determining the topic of my lesson, I spoke with Mrs. S about what they have already learned
and what they still need taught, and it seemed as though most of their topics had already been
taught, and if they hadn’t been taught she already had a strict schedule as to when she would
teach them and what activities they would do with each. This made it easy for me to identify
that my lesson would be a Social-Emotional Learning lesson. I started to think about what they
may need, and I remembered that I had seen some students make hurtful jokes to other
students without meaning harm, so I decided to teach a lesson on self-esteem so that they
could understand not to behave that way. I began by thinking of an activity to do, and I
remembered when I was in summer camp and we would do little activities before going to bed.
One time we did one where we each wrote our name on a note card and passed it around to
write compliments to everyone. I decided to do this because it aligned very well with self-esteem
and seemed easy for the students to grasp. After that, I found a cute template for
self-compassion and added my own information for the students. Throughout this process, I
mostly talked with Mrs. S because I figured she would know how her students would learn the
best. She gave me small changed to make, like handing out clipboards and colored pencils so
that it wouldn’t be chaotic to have them do it themselves, and she also gave me the idea of
putting their name on the paper for them so that they wouldn’t have to take a bunch of time to
do that.

Because I had already anticipated that they would take a long time to write their names, grab a
clipboard, and bring pencils, I had already written their names and attached each of their
papers to a clipboard to make it easier and quicker for them. When I passed out colored pencils,
it took a lot longer than I thought because they all had a certain color they HAD to get, and they
kept picking ones that weren’t sharpened so some of them had to get up to sharpen them.
When planning, I anticipated that some of them may not know their right and left, so when I told
them to pass them to the right, I even gave them a specific example like “Aayan will pass to
James, and James will pass to Lola;” however, a few students still passed it the wrong way so I
had to correct that, but after that it went smoothly. They all had the correct materials, but I
think it might have been helpful for me to write their names on the front and back of the papers
so that when they ran out of space and had to flip it over, they could tell whose paper it was.
The lesson took almost the exact amount of time that I thought it would, which was great for
Mrs. S because she had plenty of time to get through everything she needed by the end of the
day. The students told me after that they absolutely loved my lesson, and that my slides were
so pretty and how good of an idea the activity was. It makes me grateful that I have gotten so
close to them that they felt comfortable with me teaching and they were able to listen and follow
my instructions because they trust me.

The “after” section is on the next page ↓↓↓

From this lesson, I learned that it is best to know your students when planning a lesson
because if I had not anticipated specific student behaviors, it may not have gone as smoothly
as it did. I know that this lesson was a success because, believe it or not, when we went out for
recess some of the girls were playing hide-and-seek (I think) and one of them made a joke to
someone else along the lines of “OMG, are you stupid? She’s over there!” and the girl she was
talking to said, “That really hurt my feelings, and I don’t like to be called stupid.” and the other
girl responded, “I’m sorry, you’re right I didn’t think before I said that, and I didn’t realize the
impact it could have made.” When I heard this I was kind of in shock because I never hear
students acting this mature, but I’m glad to think that I made an impact on their thought
process. I did spend quite a bit of time on this lesson, especially because I wanted to practice
multiple times to anticipate how long it would take and every little scenario that might come up
during the activity. I think that this time spent preparing made it go a lot more smoothly
because I already knew how each student would act in certain scenarios, like those who might
want to decorate their writing, or take up too much space writing their own name, etc. Honestly,
if I did this lesson again, the only difference I would make would be to include Mrs. S and I in the
activity just to get a little bit more involved with them.