Sarah Smith

UTL 640E, Haug

10/23/15
Lesson Reflection #2
Lesson Reflection #2
For my 4th, 5th and 6th teaches, I was able to create a lesson plan
with more freedom regarding what activities I wanted my students to
do and started to take over more control of the classroom during the
period that I taught. My 4th and 5th teaches were facilitating a final book
discussion of The Pearl with the two periods of the freshmen I teach,
and my 6th teach was a lesson on Transcendentalism and analyzing for
diction and syntax. For the final book discussion we did a modified
gallery walk discussion, where the students passed questions around
from group to group and we were then able to go over every groups
answer to a question and present them to the class and discuss. Both
6th and 8th period enjoyed and were productive in the lesson, but it was
an exercise in classroom management for me, and highlighted some of
the things I need to work on as I go forward in my teaching. My lesson
on Transcendentalism was the first time I taught my CTs AP Language
class, and the age difference was something I was nervous about but
ended up enjoying, and I was satisfied with how I created a full class
period and took over the class more than I have in my other teaches.
I am still strong in the things I highlighted in my last reflection, I
have created a great rapport with my students, especially the
freshmen, because at this point Ive taught them 5 times. But I also
was able to easily get on the juniors level and make connections with

Sarah Smith
UTL 640E, Haug
10/23/15
Lesson Reflection #2
them as they were working. These past 3 teaches also employed a
more diversified range of learning modes and especially in my
Transcendentalism lesson, I had the students switching between
different activities, all related to the same work, consistently
throughout the period. I also have been working on incorporating
technology, and though I didnt do much with technology in The Pearl
lessons, I used a video, the doc cam and regularly searched things on
Google images as we were reading the excerpt from Nature, so that
students could better understand some of the more abstract words and
concepts Emerson uses. In my 4th and 5th teaches, I also realized I
needed to work on my clarity in giving instructions because I tend to
not chunk instructions, causing the students to forget what I want
them to do, so in my 6th teach I made an effort to not be doing that and
used a PowerPoint to keep myself on track with what instructions I
needed to be giving at one time, and it helped a lot with the flow and
clarity of my teaching.
I still think I need to work on how I give instructions and how clear I
am while teaching, because I still have a tendency to get flustered and
then word vomit a lot of information to my students. I also want to
work on my questioning techniques and monitoring what types of
questions Im asking, because sometimes I feel like Im playing guess
what Im thinking instead of honoring what the students are actually

Sarah Smith
UTL 640E, Haug
10/23/15
Lesson Reflection #2
saying and just going with that. But after teaching about
Transcendentalism, I also realized I need to be more prepared to give
students the accepted meaning of some things, because there are
students that need to know what it really means, so even though I
research Transcendentalism to prepare for the lesson and had gone
through the excerpt and annotated everything, I still got a question
that I didnt full know how to answer. And the last thing I want to be
working on is making myself more of an authority figure in the
classroom, because while I think I do have my students respect and
attention, I want to be seen more as a teacher rather than someone
whos in their classroom every once in a while and teaches fun
lessons, in preparation for next semester.