TWS - Aliya Zaidi

Reflection

Behavior: What were your concerns; what worked; what did not; challenges?

Before I started my unit plan, I had lots of concerns regarding the behaviors. This unit plan has

so many activities and some lessons are so long. I was worried that students might get tired and

not be interested in the lesson. First thing that I did was plan my lesson first thing in the morning

so that I can have all the attention from the students. I also broke my lesson into two parts, if the

lesson was long. All these accommodations helped me engage students into my lesson.

How did you conduct formative assessment and make changes as you taught your

lesson?

During my lesson I did formative assessment by observing and checking the daily fact

worksheet of the students. By doing formative assessments I was able to modify my lesson and

went into more details in the area that students were struggling. Based on my formative

assessment I provided small group instructions to the students who needed extra help. Small

group instructions helped those students understand the content and were able to engage in the

lesson.

What effective teaching strategies and technology did you use?

Throughout my lesson I used multiple teaching methods so that I can connect with diverse

learners. I used songs, videos, smartboard, read aloud and movements throughout my lesson. I

used a cooperative learning strategy so that students learn from each other by working in small

groups. I also model instructions and content many times so that my ELL students get the clear

idea of the expectation and they can work independently. To involve my diverse learners, I

sometimes intentionally made mistakes so that my students can correct me. If students, see a

teacher making a mistake this gave my students some confidence that it's okay to be wrong if

we are learning and participating. All these teaching strategies helped my engaged my students

throughout my unit plan.

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 TWS - Aliya Zaidi

Academic: What were your concerns; what worked; what did not; challenges?

Some of the contents in this lesson was hard for ELL students to understand. Students had a

hard time understanding the difference between warm-blooded and cold-blooded animals. If I

would do this lesson again, I would add an extra lesson understanding the difference between

those two terms. My other concern was that each animal group has some facts that students

should tell by the end of this lesson. Between amphibians and reptiles’ students were kind of

confused and I was aware of that by the post assessment date. After getting the data from pre-

assessment I decide to teach reptiles and amphibian first so that I can review towards the end

of the unit plan.