Throughout my time as a student teacher, I have had many moments in which I am asked by my mentor teacher or a professor to reflect upon a lesson, my classroom management, or a given assessment. Initially, I believed I was asked to reflect because I was learning how to be a teacher, but I have now come to understand that the practice of self-reflection is imperative. It is my professional responsibility to carefully consider my actions within a classroom, but it is also my duty to continually strive to be a better teacher.

 

I decided to record myself teaching a lesson in order to reflect on my teaching practice. I thought that this would be the most objective way to actually assess myself as a teacher. I knew that watching myself after a lesson would tell me the most about student progress, as well as what worked well about the lesson and what I could improve upon. This practice is grounded in Domain 4: Professional Responsibilities of Danielson’s Framework of Teaching. In particular, the choice to record myself teaching primarily falls within Domain 4a (Reflecting on Teaching). I felt as though recording myself would be helpful because as teachers, we often feel a specific way about a lesson that does not necessarily mirror what actually occurred. Moreover, I wanted to analyze my pacing, transitions, and whether I tend to focus too much upon any one topic. I chose to record a lesson in which I taught my English III class which focused on how to craft introductory paragraphs for a photographic essay they had been creating.

 

The unit’s essential standard was Arkansas State Standard RL.11-12.2: “Determine two or more themes or central ideas of a text and analyze their development over the course of the text, including how they interact and build on one another to produce a complex account.” The unit’s supplemental standard was Arkansas State Standard RL.11-12.1: “Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text, including determining where the text leaves matters uncertain.”

 

The learning objectives I crafted the lesson plan to address were as follows: 1. Students will be able to compose a creative introductory paragraph to accompany a photo analysis essay. 2. Students will be able to conference with the instructor to receive suggestions to improve their introductory paragraphs (if they elect to). Each learning objective was expressed to my students at the beginning of the lesson.

 

The summative assessment that accompanied this unit was a photographic essay. The two project options were: 1. “Choose one aspect of your life that brings you joy. This could be an object, a place, a memory, a person, etc. Analyze the beauty and value of that aspect of your life by examining it closely through writing and photography.” 2. “Analyze the current state of the American Dream. Your analysis could come from your own personal point of view or based on public opinion. Analyze the status of this deal by examining its separate aspects through writing and photography.” Students were tasked with taking four of their own original photographs and composing four accompanying paragraphs and one introductory paragraph. This was to be presented on their own Adobe Spark Page.

 

I began the lesson by asking my students a series of questions regarding the concept of creative writing. Previous writing for this unit was focused on analysis of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, and I wanted to stress that the writing were doing for the photographic essay was much more personal and utilized features of creative writing. In order to activate prior knowledge, I asked students what kinds of writing we had done in the past. Next, I asked what they felt qualifies as “good” creative writing and what they felt to be characteristics of “good” creative writing. Most students answered that creative writing was personal, vivid, and evokes strong emotion. I asked why we should even care about creative writing. Most students hesitated to respond. I found that the best way to transition to the next part of my lesson was to ask students, “Why do you think I’m talking about creative writing right now? How does this relate to what we are doing right now?” One student responded, “...well with the photo essays it’s probably because we’re going to have to implement qualities from creative writing.”

 

After this response, I felt as though it was time to introduce the class to strong examples of student-produced creative writing from our photographic essays. I withheld the names of those students and prefaced the activity by telling students that we would focus on the positives of their peers’ work and to be kind in their language. After reading each piece, I initially asked, “What works well in this paragraph?” in order to create a dialogue that mirrored the characteristics of “good” creative writing we had identified at the beginning of class. Students began making similar connections, and cited that the student-produced work was “personal,” “creative,” had “strong language” and was descriptive. I concluded this part of the lesson by stressing that I felt as though every student could incorporate creative language well in their own photographic essay writing.

 

To introduce writing introductory paragraphs for our photographic essays, I showed the students examples of introductory paragraphs that my mentor and I had written for our own photographic essays. I asked similar questions as before, but most students noticed that our introductory paragraphs did not simply list what our photographs would consist of; many students stated that we intentionally left details out in order to “entice” the reader. I stressed that this was the point of our introductory paragraph: to introduce the theme of our photos, but to not tell the entire story.

 

I then asked students, who had now seen numerous examples of creative writing and introductory paragraphs, how we could emulate these characteristics in our own writing. To facilitate this conversation, I gave each group a sheet of paper and asked them to list six “must-haves” that should be included in an introductory paragraph. I asked them to also incorporate elements of the rubric section that addressed the introductory paragraph. After several minutes, each group was asked to present their ideas to the class, and I found that these elements followed a similar thread: a strong introductory paragraph should be personal, descriptive, hook the audience, use strong language, refrain from telling the entire story, and coherent.

 

When we had compiled a list of “must-haves,” I instructed the students to work silently for the rest of the hour over their introductions and photographic essays. I told the students that they were able to conference with me if they needed help on their essays or introductions, and I sat at the front of the room and gave feedback to multiple students during individual conferences over the course of the entire hour. These conferences functioned as a sort of formative assessment; each piece of feedback referenced the rubric, but was also tailored to each student’s needs. I closed the lesson by reminding students that their photographic essays, including their introductions, needed to be finished by the next class period in order to be put into an Adobe Spark Page.

 

After teaching my lesson, I wondered if I had clearly explained characteristics of creative writing, as some students were reluctant to speak during class. I wondered if I had used the student-produced pieces of creative writing well as mentor texts. I struggled with knowing whether or not they would be able to incorporate descriptive writing into their own photographic essays. However, after reviewing my recording a day later, I found that students, were in fact, making connections to their own work. For example, one of my students who is an English Language Learner met with me to conference about her work during a later part of the class. She asked me if I could recommend how she could start her introduction, and I gave her some feedback by reminding her of characteristics of creating writing, and how she could specifically incorporate those details in her introduction. I was pleasantly surprised when I conferenced with her roughly 20 minutes later and found that she used descriptions such as “chlorine smell of the pool” and “humid and cold sand” to describe her connection with water. It was personal, and I was grateful to be able to see this interaction on film, particularly because I was able to see the moment in which I learned more about what was important to her.

 

I think that another strength of my lesson would be conferencing with students in general. Five students initially met with me after I gave the class the option to conference with me. However, I noticed some reluctance in students actually meeting me at my desk, so I decided to walk around the room so students would be able to ask me questions from their desks. I noticed that many more students took advantage of this, and by the end of the period, I found that I had talked to roughly ⅔ of the class about their projects, and much of the recording of this period is driven by student directed questions. Many students had identified strengths in their writings, but were also willing to talk about what they should change. I understood the conferencing to be a strength of my lesson because I was able to continually differentiate my instruction based on student need.

 

I was happy that I recorded this lesson because I realized a common theme among my students’ concerns in writing an introductory paragraph. My mentor and I had not expressed what was required in their introductory paragraphs, and for that reason, many students felt as though they were simply repeating themselves in their introduction. For example, one student, who chose his faith as something he wanted to analyze, expressed frustration that his introductory paragraph would not include anything that he had not already said. I felt as though this problem may not have arisen if we had included the expectations for the introductory paragraph when originally presenting our students with the project. Although I was able to help these students with writing an introduction, I realized how important it is to always discuss expectations of every facet of a project from its introduction.

 

In addition to presenting students with an overview of the project and its various parts from its initiation, if I were going to teach this lesson in the future, I would create a class period where I would individually meet with each student to discuss their essays. Due to the time constraints of the class, I found that there were many students I was unable to sit down and discuss with, especially as many of the students who initially talked to me kept asking for guidance. Although I was happy to accommodate these students, I feel as though I did a disservice by not taking time to meet with each student.

 

Overall, I was grateful that I had the opportunity to record myself teaching. I was nervous at first, and worried that I would find too many flaws in my practice, but I found many tangible things that I could improve upon and I am excited to grow as a teacher. I am ready to learn more, and reflection is the first step of that process.