Date: __2/20___

Learning/Teaching Log # __1__

____ Please Score this Log

Area of Focus

Observations/Reflections

Rate the effectiveness of your teaching on student learning on a scale

of 1 to 5 (1 being least effective, 5 being most effective): 4

Effectiveness of
Why did you give this rating? (Things to consider include: what did
Learning/Teaching or didnt go well, level of student engagement, use of materials,
Interaction
pacing of the lesson, etc.)
I really enjoyed this lesson and it will serve well to support the
upcoming lessons. Unfortunately, I only had two of my three students
for the first half of my lesson. To introduce them to the unit, I placed
out four different pages with images representing our weekly topics.
They wrote down anything that came to mind when they looked at
them and what they think it might have to do with economics. I
really liked how this served as a way to let them whats coming up
while also serving as an alternative KWL type activity. I wanted to
see what knowledge my students already possessed and what types of
connections they made. When I read their responses, one of my
students really surprised me by identifying the relationships between
the images on a page, which I did not expect to happen! For example,
for the page depicting the different kinds of resources, she said use
tools to cut down trees and make the trees into stuff. Wow! I now
know this student is demonstrating some creative and in-depth
thinking and will likely require me to provide her with more
challenge.
Despite the students being engaged and contributing great ideas, I
feel like I could have improved this activity and made it more
exciting in a couple of ways. I had a lot of technical difficulties with
printing, and ended up only being able to print black and white. This
made it harder to make out what they were, and I also feel like the
pictures were too small. If I were to do it again, I think I would have
tried to make color posters for each topic to make them more
appealing visually. I feel like this could have served to create some
hype for the upcoming weeks. It would have been cool to take
pictures myself of places around the community to help make them
more relevant. I wish I would have thought of this earlier! I also wish
I had them think of a question they had for each image to encourage
them to write a little more.
After this activity, we moved into discussing our vocabulary. We
talked about the differences between human, natural, and capital
resources. I expected some confusion about capital resources,
especially because capital doesnt give as clear of a clue about the
type of resources. This did end up happening, so I made sure to give
lots of examples that would go in that category. This definitely helped
them make the distinction. This was probably the least engaging part
of my lesson, just because it relied a lot on me talking and explaining.
However, I feel like this was necessary to support the fairly difficult
vocabulary in this lesson.
To apply their vocabulary knowledge, we read The Goat in the Rug. I
loved this book as a way to teach resources, as it talks about the step
by step process of creating a Navajo rug while also integrating other
Social Studies content! I tried to create a game-like activity by asking
them to try to identify as many resources as they could (they wrote

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Name: _Dora Casimir____

Next Steps
Based on this reflection, what are
the three most important things to
include or do in the next lesson and
why?
For next week and beyond, I will
really need to think about
differentiation in my lessons. My
students are all very different in
terms of personality, content
knowledge, reading and writing
levels. I feel like it is really easy to
not provide sufficient challenge for
students who really need it, so I
want to make sure to provide
opportunities for a challenge as well
as support for students who need it.
It is going to be a challenge for me
to decide on appropriate texts that
will catch the interest of all of my
students. Im actually really glad I
have the group I do so I can get this
experience!
I also think I want to try to find
more ways to put emphasis on how
these concepts are relevant to their
own lives. Ultimately, this is going
to be what makes all of the content
that they are learning stick. I would
like to make sure to make
connections to their upcoming
flower sales project. My students
actually did this on their own during
this lesson, which I thought was
really cool! Making these
connections to something they are
doing in their lives right now will
give the students a purpose for
learning and retaining these
economic concepts!
Finally, I will need to anticipate that
my third student may be showing up
late to my lessons. I will need to
figure out how I can support his
learning and catch him up without
taking away from my other students
learning. Next week, my planned
activity to teach the content is a very
hands on simulation. If he arrives
late again, hes going to miss out on
experiencing the concepts we are
talking about himself which is going

ED 318 Fall, 2014

Date: __2/20___

Learning/Teaching Log # __1__

____ Please Score this Log

Area of Focus

Observations/Reflections

them on individual post-its) as we read. This encouraged them to

listen and examine the illustrations very carefully. They were super
engaged in this activity! They had so much fun. My goal was for
them to identify at least 3 resources, but they each had at least 10.
Once again, as they sorted their post-its into the types of resources
they were super into the activity and for the most part correctly
organized all of the post-its. I just needed to clarify natural versus
capital resources briefly. I think the book really helped cement their
understanding as they were able to experience the whole process of
making a final product.
I was really disappointed my third student missed this part of our
lesson. He arrived just as we were in the process of sorting all of the
post-its. Unfortunately, this was highly dependent on the preceding
activities so he was very confused about what was going on. To try to
remedy this, I asked the other students to help me bring him up to
speed. It was somewhat successful, but there was just not enough
time to help him as much as I would have liked to.

Name: _Dora Casimir____

Next Steps
to be very detrimental. Im a little
lost on how I will accommodate
this. I may have to devote some
more one-on-one time with him
while my other students work
independently in their learning logs.
I dont want to expect him to
complete an exit ticket successfully
if he doesnt even get to experience
the important activities. Also, I was
going to base next weeks exit ticket
on The Goat in the Rug, but he
wasnt there when I read it. I
probably will need to revise my exit
ticket question to relate to a
different scenario, or allow my
students to pick between a few
different prompts.

To wrap up our lesson, for an assessment the students identified a

product of their choice and came up with at least one resource from
each category. This worked out well because the two students who
were there for the whole lesson were able to work independently
while I helped walk my third student through the prompt. He
struggled with it quite a bit, which is understandable since he missed
nearly all of the content of our lesson. He was also very reluctant to
write and was having trouble focusing on his writing. However, with
my assistance he was able to complete the prompt successfully.
While I did this, the girls actually correctly identified resources from
TWO resources as well as utilizing the vocabulary introduced in their
writing. Awesome!!
Since they demonstrated that they had met my objectives for the
lesson and we had a decent amount of extra time, I decided to have
them brainstorm ideas for their business plan while I gave my third
student some needed one-on-one so he wasnt lost next week. I
explained their upcoming project and had them think of ideas for
products (vocabulary word!) that they want to come up with a plan to
sell. Im really glad I was able to devote some extra time to this
already. There were some hilarious and creative ideas. I am so
excited to see where they go with these in the next few weeks!
Overall, I believe this was a successful lesson. My students met my
objectives and I came away with some new ideas that could improve
my students engagement when I cover these topics in my future
teaching.

Literacy Skills &

Knowledge

comprehension
vocabulary
word recognition/
decoding

Choose two of the literacy domains listed that were most prominent
in the learning/teaching interaction. What knowledge or skills did
you notice in your students? What could they do? What was difficult
for them?
I think the most prominent literacy domain in this lesson was
vocabulary. Right away, each student was provided their own
individual word walls to keep track of our vocabulary. Getting a good

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Based on this observation, what are

the two most important ways you
can scaffold students literacy
learning in the next lesson and
why?
I did expect my students to

ED 318 Fall, 2014

Date: __2/20___

Learning/Teaching Log # __1__

____ Please Score this Log

Area of Focus

Observations/Reflections

sense of the vocabulary was crucial for their success in the lesson
activities. As I stated in my reflection, I made sure to explicitly
explain and define each vocabulary word in age-appropriate
language. The post-it activity synthesized what they learned by
allowing them to sort resources that they identified themselves. This
also demonstrated they understood the vocabulary clearly, as nearly
all of the post-its were classified correctly. They had a bit of a
difficult time distinguishing natural versus capital resources, so I
made sure to spend time giving more examples and support for these
vocabulary words. What I thought was great was that they all utilized
the vocabulary word product in their learning log exit tickets and
brainstorming, even though I did not explicitly tell them to do so! Its
really exciting to see this happening.

fluency
genre-based
knowledge
(reading/ writing)
composition
elements [ideas,
organization, voice,
word choice,
conventions]

The post-it activity also acted as a comprehension activity! The

students had to listen to and comprehend what I was reading to them
to be able to identify resources. While they were sorting, I was able to
ask them questions like Why did you pick that item as a resource?
and they all able to give me answers such as The dye is a resource
because the woman in the story used it to color the yarn for the rug.
or The woman needed the wool from the sheep to make yarn for the
rug. This demonstrated their comprehension of the story as they
were able to explain the resource in the context of the book! I was a
little worried that they would only focus on finding resources and as a
result tune out the events of the story. By asking them some probing
questions, I was able to see that this wasnt a problem for them!

Literacy
Assessment

What went well or needs improvement with regards to giving the

assessment? What can you say about the students knowledge/skill in
the targeted area (analysis of assessment results)?

___ Lesson/Unit
Assessments
___ Qualitative
Spelling
Inventory
___ Fluency
___ Comprehension
___ Word Recognition

Name: _Dora Casimir____

Next Steps
experience some difficulty with the
complex vocabulary they are being
introduced to. Next week we are
covering some difficult concepts as
well, so I will have to make sure I
provide more explicit support to our
vocabulary. I think providing
students with multiple scenarios
where the vocabulary is used is
going to be very important. I will
continue to encourage students to
utilize their word walls, as these will
become important as we move into
working on our business plans. I
think I will likely modify the format
of their word walls to include space
for them to draw a picture.
I had planned to reference The Goat
in the Rug in my exit ticket prompt
next week, but since one of my
students missed this part of my
lesson I dont think this may be
appropriate anymore. However, I
may make it an option. If so, we
may have to review the book briefly,
and make it available for them to
reference, since a week is a pretty
long time to go between lessons for
4th graders! I am hoping to
incorporate some more
informational texts if I can find any
that are relevant to our lessons. To
support their comprehension, I
would like to talk about strategies
they can use to help them interpret
the information.
Based on the assessment you
administered, what would be the
most important thing to work on
with this student and why?

I did not perform my assessment of a student yet!

Reflect in this space about anything you felt didnt fit into the top
Other Musings
three sections. You can also include questions here for me.
and Questions
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Based on your other musings or

questions, is there anything you

ED 318 Fall, 2014

Date: __2/20___

Learning/Teaching Log # __1__

____ Please Score this Log

Area of Focus

Name: _Dora Casimir____

Observations/Reflections

I thought you would enjoy one of my students product ideas. I was

cracking up when I went through and read all of their writing after
the lesson. I cant wait to see what she comes up with when we
actually get more in-depth with this project. Here they are:
The amazing chair
Smelly carpets
Weird water bottle
Book backpack
Crazy coat

Next Steps
would like to do or change in the
next lesson?

Comments:

Poin
ts
Thoroug
h
Reflectio
n

Critical
Reflectio
n
Applied
Reflectio
n
Total:

30

30

40

Learning/Teaching Log Rubric

Description
The response has detailed reflection for each
aspect of the learning/teaching interaction
effectiveness of the learning/teaching
interaction, observation of literacy skills and
knowledge of the students, and assessment
administration and analysis.
The response demonstrates an in-depth critique
of how the learning of the students was related
to the teaching moves applied in the
interaction.
Response includes specific modifications or
additions that are specifically drawn from the
reflection to be applied in the next lesson of the
unit.

Points

__/30

__/30

__/40

100

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ED 318 Fall, 2014