July 2008: Self-Eval of my Teaching on Tape

Friday, July 04, 2008

As I write this reflection, I’m listening to India.Arie’s  song, “Video.” In truth, its lyrics are not really applicable here, but it’s laughable to think of a teacher in terms of an actor or performer. Not quite... (although I did laugh at one instance in which I heard myself sound like the monotone, slow and drab English teacher in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off: “If the sun is siiiiinking, it makes me think of a boat sinking, which is baaaad, because if the sun sinks, then the snow won’t melt.”)

My initial reaction to my lesson was, “what a relief that this lesson is so much better than my lesson on Friday!” I saw myself bounce back.  I was in my element teaching this lesson on imagery, versus my muddled, over-done lesson on transition sentences. I could see that there was certainty in my delivery that was missing in that prior lesson.  That might pose a problem for this self-evaluation, because every lesson I teach won’t be a topic I relish. It would have been better to film myself teaching something I am neutral about. But imagery, I love this stuff.

Strengths:

·          Bellringer. I love DOL (daily oral language), and I am pretty sure it showed. The kids got into it too. They were on-task from the start. It’s a great bellringer for high levels of participation.

·          Classroom management. Gave short warnings when they were “merited.”

·          Set. I got seven students to speak up. I wrung description out of them, too. I got a glimpse of their imaginations (“yeah, but what does cotton candy taste like?” “raspberries...bubblegum...”). And, my favorite part of the set: students giggled. I went with the laughing instead of silencing it, because it was contained laughter. Plus, isn’t that a good sign of a good set? [I’ll admit I was a little afraid that the students were laughing at me, perhaps at the cheesiness of describing a carnival, but it was better to play along than go against the laughter!]

·          Confidence. I had a grip on the subject and the students. It was fun. If I had fun, maybe they had (at least an ounce of) fun, too.

·          I remembered to go over the daily agenda. I have a bad habit of usually forgetting this.

·          I taught vocab words along the way: Engaging. (I should make a word wall and use periodic vocab quizzes)

·          I announced how I would be grading the formal assessment (IP classwork) and wrote idiot-proof instructions on the board. As a result, the quality of the students’ work was VASTLY IMPROVED compared to when I did not give idiot-proof instructions on the board. Six students scored perfectly or almost perfectly on the assignment.

·          I hammered at the objective. (I asked them, “How does this make the poem effective?” over and over and over again)

Weaknesses:

·          At the start, my transitions were really choppy. I went from bellringer to set, set to preview, preview to objective like a softball player attempting ballet. I had a student pass out worksheets after we were ready to use them, causing almost a whole wasted minute.

·          A persistent weakness of my lessons: imbalanced time management (instruction + guided practice > independent practice). I need to start treating IP as the most precious part of the 50 miunutes.

·          I was totally surprised by how I move around the room like a maniac. I am constantly racing around the room, from the overhead, to the table by the board, to the board, to the sleeping student’s side, etc. I think it comes to the point of distraction, rather than being a good circulation tactic.

·          I need to stop saying, “does that sound right?” as the way to teach grammar. My students will always say, “sure, that sounds fine.” I should have just stuck with the real reason I gave earlier (“cover up Jessica, then read it: ‘Him decided to go to Memphis,’ or ‘He decided to go to Memphis’?)

·          Favoring the vocal students. I entirely (and unconsciously) skipped over Marquires, a very bright student. I think each student spoke once in class, but some definitely spoke too much. (But it’s so easy to call on students who will say something helpful to my point!!!!) This negatively affects my informal assessment – I only caught those students who are regularly afloat, and let the others pass under the radar and sink.

·          Poor management of sleepy students. I entirely missed one student snoozing during GP.

·          My closure was mid-delivery at the bell, and went 10-seconds past it. Not good.

I learned that giving explicit formal assessment instructions is vital to students’ performance. Writing instructions on the board is the key to their success.  I also learned that it is very easy to let a handful of kids’ voices go unheard. It is too easy to neglect the quiet students. I learned that I also will not also always be catching my students nodding off, and that sometimes the best way to cope with laughing students is to just laugh with them and thereby steer the instruction back to control. I learned that IP time needs to be preserved. The only way I could have done that in this lesson would be to have smoother transitions to cut out wasted, dead time  (I am glad I have the block to work with, so class-work won’t have to turn into homework very often).