Video Reflections

WARNING: The quality of these videos is terrible and the angle is awkward.  Also, most of my lessons involve individual work with me monitoring progress rather than lectures.

So, once again: AWKWARD.

Lesson One

This first part of the video was with the BIO-POEM lesson to the eighth grade ELA students.  The purpose of this portion was to get the students thinking about the importance of choosing powerful words to describe themselves.

Altogether, this portion of the lesson went smoothly.  However, I just realized in watching the video that the two boys in the mustard sweatshirts were not really on-task throughout this activity.  I probably should have checked on them first to jumpstart this activity with them.  These two generally disengage from class activities frequently, and even distract each other at times.  It might have been beneficial to mix up the groups from what they are used to, assigning each one of these boys (in particular) with other students in the class.  This would help to break them away from their distractions.

In watching this, I also can't help but really wish that I had transitioned the partner activity/ mini-lecture with the bio-poem.  In my mind, I knew there was a connection but I don't really see myself really clearly defining the connection for the students.



Lesson One: Part One

In general, this group of eighth graders are pretty good about getting activities done.  However, there is alot of time used in transitional periods that is not effective.  This lesson, in particular, was one in which I struggled with time management.  This was the first lesson I taught, and I did not follow the clock as well as I could have.

In watching this video, I also realized that this was ample opportunity to go over instructions clearly and provide powerful examples to the whole class before sending them all on their way to do individual work.  This would have allowed for more time to actually brainstorm and then construct the bio-poem, and go on to the other activities of the classroom.

Also, in watching this portion of the video, I realize that there was a student in the back row who was clearly not excited about the material I was sharing.  He's such a brilliant student, so I could have easily brought him into the conversation, rather than centralize the lecture/ dialogue with the five or six most vocal students.

I wish I had the part of the video where one student semi-jokingly hit his friend in the face with an ipad.  I wanted to see that part because I KNOW that I could have handled it better.  I kind of froze and didn't know what to do.  It was a perfect time to address the class as a whole and go over the directions again.  Also, I probably could have helped the poor kid more than I di. I was so nervous!

Lesson Two

This segment of video came from my lesson to seventh graders on The Outsiders Chapter One.  This part mainly focused on when the students were working on comprehension questions and the character grid. Ms. Baldwin helped with answering questions as well.  She occasionally walked around and checked on students, too, though, it was mainly just me.

The class community is pretty chill.  Most students work independently and they seem to enjoy it.  Ms. Baldwin normally allows small chatter as long as it is on-task.  That being said: I see many opportunities in this video where I could have checked in with the few students I see on the screen to keep them focused.  One of the boys, in particular, often gets off-track.  He is a creative thinker, but often follows his train of thought on and on until he is no longer even engaged with the task at hand anymore.  This student would have benefited from me checking in.

This was the class where I felt the students had the most anxiety about the number of tasks they had to complete.  I should have made it clearer that my expectations were that they get as much done on their character grid as they could.  It was a work period.  One student (off-screen) was stressed because she didn't feel she had enough time to complete the activities.  While I had announced once that they were expected to get as much as they could done on the task, I should definitely have announced it again.


Lesson Two

This video really resembles the last one.  Thanks to our struggling videographing skills, part of the video overlapped.

That being said: I clearly see two boys getting a little off-task at the beginning of this video.  The one boy had already finished his task.  Instead of moving on to the next things on the list on the board unprompted, he distracted his neighbor.  I should have addressed the class to keep moving at the own pace down the list.  If they complete one activity, they simply need to move on to the next task without being prompted by me.  I also could have addressed him, personally.

When I introduced the comprehension questions, I asked the students if they knew what first/second/third person was.  They assuredly told me they did.  In fact, I had thought at the time that they thought I was silly for asking it based on the resolve some of them had. In watching this video, I realize that there were many misconceptions about 1st/2nd/3rd person that I TOTALLY could have addressed, but didn't!  So many different people had the same questions that I could have helped.

Ms. Baldwin, in this video, addresses one student who was having behavioral problems because I didn't see him.  I do wish I had!