As a teacher candidate at West Virginia State University, I appreciate the practice and effort I have put into developing myself as a teacher. Reflecting upon my work can be a teachable moment using journaling to reflect upon my educational practices. My reflections often hit me after I teach my lessons through my thorough formative assessments of my student's comprehension, and I regret my decisions because I learn from those mistakes.  How I respond to those moments makes the learning authentic and meaningful for the students. What exactly does this mean? Well, this can only mean that through trial and error, I have had many lessons that did not go as planned and that I had to go back to the planning phase and reimagine how to get the information so the students can understand. Sometimes, a lesson looks beautiful on paper, but it could be better in the classroom. This happened to me most recently in my EDUC 426 Unit Plan for my "Variations of Traits" STEM Science for third grade. Mr. Ed Rider, my WVSU Educational Supervisor, observed my lesson and provided vital feedback that helped change my lesson from Day 2 to Day 3 upon constructive feedback. I implemented the suggested vocabulary changes and my activity to the game "Slap It!"

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Each time I revisit this moment, I know my students are not as discouraged as I am, but I can sense the frustration. There were significant parts that connected well and parts that did not and quickly failed severely so that I would never try again! For one, using Google Forms for my Pre-Assessment was terrific. Nevertheless, then, at the time of my lesson, several students' tablets were dead, and the student with an IEP accommodation could not get his Text-to-Speech system to work with Google Forms; I was bombarded with a million questions of students questions not knowing the meaning of the vocabulary and the words because this is a pre-assessment "they have not been taught the material" I tried making that clear again until finally, I asked that if they did not know anything in the spots to make an educated guess or type no for the typed portion. This was a nightmare story that caused twenty minutes for a pre-assessment from my actual lesson, which killed the momentum and made a rushed and pushed science lesson on day one that focused on vocabulary and learning about the Scientific Method as I was trying to finish up the first part of our experiment during the dismissal procedures. 

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This first lesson had me asking, "Am I going to be a good enough teacher?" So, that entire weekend, I reviewed the positives from Google Forms. I wanted to use it because Google analyzes the data, and my students, by the numbers, scored 50.3% on average on the grades across the pre-assessment, about half the knowledge that was met before even teaching the lesson with just prior knowledge. After I had taught the lesson, I knew that the academic vocabulary was at a higher level than what they understood once the questions started to come forth, and that was the most significant part of my issues: getting the comprehension to move forward. I had so much planned that made the day pressed for a fast-paced lesson that should never been crammed all into one. I know this now after doing a solid reflection, looking back and seeing my data and looking at the recorded video feed of the lesson, which I watch to learn from my mistakes and determine strategies to improve my teaching techniques and communication skills. I want to become more apparent and consistent in my teaching, and for me to do so, I need more practice from the class in a whole group setting. This was the third lesson I have taught in front of my Residency I placement this semester, this far into the year. 

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What did I do with the information I had accumulated from my assessment, the knowledge I learned from watching my classroom recording, and the feedback from my cooperating teacher? Well, I changed day two, the lesson that was to be observed so that we could continue working on the Scientific Method, and used a real-world example of a Gallery Walk with our Coleus Plants for references as we progressed with the lesson with more explicit instruction for scaffolding during the writing portion of the lesson to guide students learning for understanding what a hypotheses is, and how to formulate a question about the experiment. We listened to the supplies we used in our experiment. Then, I utilized cooperative learning for small group discussions as a learning activity for another assessment after we had an engaging whole group discussion with many examples using dogs, humans, and our plants to relate to what we were learning. The evaluation yielded substantial progress once day two was finished; we had average scores of 4.5 out of 6, which is a 75%  C as a class. As individuals, success was 10 out of 18 with perfect scores! 

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My data resembles some of the following trends in our current grade book in our class for students who may be absent or those who are pulled out. Several students are at a higher level of reading comprehension in this classroom. Of my grade scale, their grades reflect that the vocabulary and understanding of the meanings of the words can determine the outcomes of the student's expectations. It is not that I did not know this already; I did not know they would not know the words I was using until I began my lesson. Then, I spent a long time trying to bring the students down to a level to understand the lesson I was teaching. I was leaning more toward teaching the standard rather than teaching to the students guided by the standards. I know this now.