Post Round Presenter Reflection

Olivia Meny Post Round Presenter Reflection

After reviewing my rounds responses and a video of my round, I’ve come up with my own responses to my round questions. Reviewing the rounds sheets provided so much insight into things that I didn’t see during my class. It’s so hard to focus on every single student in a class of twenty-eight, but having five extra sets of eyes was very enlightening.

Watching the video helped reveal which students were engaged, where they got frustrated and where I should have stepped in to help.

1. Are my students all engaged? Record evidence of at least one student who is engaged, and one student who is not. Have I made successful efforts to re-engage these students who are not on task.

During different points in the lesson, not all my students were explicitly on task but overall, I was very pleased with their participation. All of my students completed their color wheels and many of them provided answers, asked questions and clarified with each other.

Nelly had her head down during part of the round but she did complete the color wheel by the end of the period. I came around to Nelly several times to remind her to keep her head up and follow along. I asked her friend Tameisha to help keep her on task. Students who were listening to ipods or had cell phones out I kept redirecting throughout the lesson. Luis was very engaged during the whole round; he was usually the first person with his hand raised and not afraid to ask questions.

2. Are my directions clear and explicit? Is yes, record evidence of this. If not, did I take measures to make sure each student understood how to proceed with the activity?

I’m working on giving oral and visual examples for everything that I ask my students to do. For the bellringer, I give an example of my favorite color, and what I think it says about

1 Olivia Meny me. While I gave instructions for the color wheel, I referred to a color wheel I had drawn on the board and a smaller color wheel that I created as a prototype. Some of the people who attended my round suggested that I color in the color wheel I created on the board as the lesson went along. I think this is a great suggestion and I definitely want to do that next time I do this lesson. Even though I provided worksheets that the students could use to follow along with the directions, some of them were confused. I think if I actually drew in the colors while the students were, there would have been fewer questions/frustration.

Jose and Markys were confused about the questions that I asked on the worksheet and though I did eventually help them, they became frustrated with how long I took.

3. Are my ELL students participating in the activity? Do they ask questions when confused, or do they start to lose interest?

I think about half of my ELL students, Luis, Taleixca, Soe and Ayanle, were participating in the activity, asking questions, providing answers, etc. Markys, Jose, Frances and Thaida seemed a bit disengaged though they all completed their color wheels. I set up the seating chart so that each ELL student would be placed at a table with one other ELL student so that they could work together if confused.

Someone responded to this question by noting that “they don’t ask questions, they sit and wait for you to come to them.” I completely agree with this and it’s something I’m working on. I want them to be able to take ownership of their learning and ask for help when they need it. However, it’s hard for me to wait for them to do this on their own, and I don’t want them to fall behind. At this point, I think scaffolding them by using comprehension checks is working, but I’m working on slowly fazing this out so they learn to ask questions on their own. 2 Olivia Meny Re-watching the rounds video was so helpful to answering this question. I saw that both

Jose and Frances had their hands up to answer a question at different points in the lesson, but because they are so quiet, I didn’t even realize. I really need to work on this, because you can see in their faces that they got frustrated when I called on some of the louder students in the class instead of them.

When I watched the video, I realized that I need to make sure I’m checking to see if they are raising their hands, and encourage them to participate whenever I can. Frances and

Jose are both quiet students but I know they’re very smart, and I think encouraging their participation would help build their confidence.

4. Is there evidence that my students have learned about color relationships at the end of this lesson?

All of my students showed that they understood mixing two primary colors created a secondary color on their color wheels. Several people noted that my students seemed confused by tertiary on the rounds sheets and I agree with that. I didn’t allot enough time to aptly explain tertiary colors, I think next time I’ll spend more time going over that with examples. I prompted my students to think about color relationships by connecting to mathematics. But I think I could have honed in on this point.

Ex. Primary= one Secondary= two Tertiary= three

Primary + Primary = Secondary (1+1=2)

Almost all of my students were able to answer questions about primary and secondary colors when prompted. However, on the rounds sheet, someone noted that they thought

3 Olivia Meny my students were guessing the answers to my questions. I agree that some of them did not fully understand the color relationships, and that is a point I will sharpen in my follow up lessons. As this was an introductory lesson, the students are just starting to be immersed in color vocabulary and theory. Each day I’ll review the knowledge they’ve learned the previous day until I feel they have a complete understanding.