PROFESSIONAL RESPONSIBILITY: Teacher Reflection

Describe the portions/aspects of the lesson that worked well and why.1.
Segmenting the story into 6 parts went well. Giving students 6 parts which they
needed to learn well and master allowed them to set a numerical goal for
learning.2. Cornell Notes: Providing students with a guided note format went well.3.
Note-Time: Giving students time in-between each section helped them process
information thoroughly before moving on. During this time, students showed their
deeper understanding of story by generating quality titles, synthesizing information
in sections.4. Tone of Presentation: by slowing down pace while reading and
elongating words of interesting details, students expressed their engagement with
story by emotional responses to "non normal" events, such as the eating of children.
When this event happened, because I slowed down and made a key stress on the
statement "swallowed his children whole", multiple students realized they had
heard this story before and were finally able to make this connection, even while
this did not happen previously during any of our discussion about the Greek creation
myth.5. Section-Reviews: Reviewing after each section who the main characters
were, what theyre relationships were, and what key events took place, allowed the
students to hear multiple times the information that they needed to know. Students
had quality notes because of this. This allowed the lesson to progress well; instead
of reviewing, generally speaking, any random detail from the part, we scaffolder for
the students the important parts by asking about the same themes repeatedly: who
was there, and what did they do.

Describe the portions/aspects of the lesson that did not go as planned and why.
What would you change next time? 1. The opening engagement portion did very
little to generate background knowledge. Additionally, the order of events was not
organized, and there wasn't a continuous flow. We moved from defining mythology,
to reading definitions, to creation stories, to a checklist, and back again in a way
where the previous point did not naturally lead into the next.2. Instead of generally
activating background knowledge by asking what they thought mythology meant, I
would ask them "can you think of any movie series that people watch over and over
and over again?" I would first generate a discussion about why we like to watch
these movies, and then I would go into teacher-insight mode while introducing
mythology, rather than student discussion mode. Less than half of our students
could define what mythology was, and of the number that could, by the way that we
discussed mythology purely as a definition, I don't know that any of them have
more than an abstract understanding of what it is. By first talking about movies that
we watch over and over, we would: 1) determine the value of experiencing stories
over and over again. 2) Connect with the fact that Greeks retold their stories over
and over again too, and they called their stories "Mythology", and then we could ask
them if they knew any Greek myths, to connect this idea of mythology with the
stories they already probably know, rather than introduce it as an abstract idea. I
wouldn't even provide a definition. That might come later, but for the objectives of
this lesson, we don't need a definition of mythology. We just needed to activate
background knowledge enough to frame the story we were going to learn. Proposed
alternate flow of opening events: Greet class with positive affirmation after time for
bell work. Ask question about movies that we watch over and over. Gather value as
a class for reaching movies. Go on mini-sepal about how the Greeks retold their
stories too, and how the collection of their stories is called "Mythology. Can anyone
think of any Greek myths? Stories they told over and over again? Today, we are
going to learn about the Greek Creation Story. Many of the different cultures and
religions of the world have a story about how they believe the world was created.
Does anyone remember from our Religions unit how Christians believe ___?
Muslims? Any other creation stories? Today, we are going to learn the 6 main parts
of the Greek Creation story. To do this, we will:First, we are going to listen to the
story and you are going to take notes.Then, we are going to discuss the 6 Major
Parts of the Creation Story.After this, YOUR JOB is going to be to complete a
Storyboard of the 6 main parts of the GreekCreation Myth.On your exam, you will be
expected to know the 6 main parts of today's myth.Now, move in to setting up the
Cornell Notes.When discussing how to set up Cornell Notes, I would revisit with
students how we wanted theinformation on the right side of the line to line up with
the Part #'s on the left side of the line. Iwould explain how this helps us study.
Assure students that it is okay to skip lines.

3. The first section caught students off guard. They weren't sure what to write, and
it ended before they were ready. I would frame this first section better: Listen for
what exists, when it exists, and what it is. I would then use these same 3 questions
for a review. This would hopefullygenerate more student participation in answering
questions.4. I was happy to see many students participate in the sharing of their
titles for the sections. About half of the class regularly participated. I would try to
help the other half participate by telling them during the note-taking time that I
would asking them to share their title to encourage them to be prepared to share. I
would still double check that they had a title written before calling them to share,
however.5. The Review slide regurgitated a lot of information. Sorting out the Titles
of the sections was helpful and was good practice. However, for the information of
what was in each section, this could be done more meaningfully. There was value to
hearing this information again, but I dont know how meaningful this information
was. I think it would have been more meaningful to have graphic organizer on the
Promethean slide for each section asking who the characters were in this section,
allowed a space to answer what important character did/said/felt in that section,
and what the relationships were between certain characters. A lot more could be
done to generate/review connections within the story than simply listing the
information that had already been listed before. However, for times sake, this
might not exactly be practical.6. What academic task, specifically, was being asked
of the students during the several minutes allotted for independent work after the
lecture was ended? Many students were brain fried after the intense day and had
trouble really getting to work. I could have encouraged students to write their title
for each section and the characters down for each of the parts before they left the
room, so that we could see that they had a good start to their assignment.7. When I
reprimand students, my feet need to be firmer and my eye contact needs to lock on
tithe students I am speaking with. I will follow up these sorts of interactions with a
positive one. When reprimanding a student publicly, I need to immediately follow
that comment up with public appraisal of at least two, maybe three, other students
to do a little healing to the environment. I need to speak with students privately, if
possible. If need be, taking ten seconds together everyone's attention is very
helpful. Asking all of the students to look at a certain part of the room and stop
talking could be very helpful.8. I don't think I did the best job checking in with
specific students who have struggled in this class in the past. I need to be more
mindful about how they are grasping the content. During independent work time, I
really need to make a point to pull these students aside to discuss with them the 6
major parts.

Describe how you will use data from the assessment portion of your lesson to
inform future lessons. For example, consider what you would do if a significant
portion of the students did not do as well as expected in one or more of the
assessments.

When students turn in this assignment, we will be looking to see that they have all
of the information that they needed to have, but we will particularly be interested in
how well they applied this information to generating a creative picture. This shows
how comfortable they are with using this information. Additionally, bell work on the
Monday after break will be to revisit the 6 parts of the creation story by asking them
to write these 6 parts out again. At this point, we will really see how well they have
mastered this story. On this day, we will provide individual interventions with
students who need extra support remembering key details, while they are writing
this story. We will refer back to the creation story throughout our time studying
Ancient Greece whenever possible to continue activating and building off of this
information. If their homework is turned in on Friday and it is generally missing
major parts, we will need to provide a different way of presenting this information.
Since many of the plot developments in this story are 2-person relational, we could
divide the class into halves, and ask 1 half to represent one of the people, and
another half to represent another person. We would present the scenario where the
students were fuzzy on what happened. We would then ask the other half to discuss
how they would react to this scenario. After they decided how they would
react(representing Rhea), we as teachers would clear up exactly how this reaction
connects to Rheas real reaction and then we would have all of the students write
down both the scenario and the reaction of Rhea to the scenario.