The Reflection

I had this crazy realization today that if I want to get really good at lesson planning, I really need to consistently spend time reflecting after each lesson. So why is that important? Because then it's so much easier to remember the important things from my last lesson and apply that to my next lesson. It makes planning way more efficient. When I reflect, I just pull out my journal and these are the things that I usually write down:

First I'll usually write a couple of sentence about the overall feeling from the lesson. It's usually something like, "Man that was awesome, everything went really well." Or, "Man that was pretty bad. X happened."

The Good:
This is all the stuff that went well. For example, for my last lesson I was extremely prepared because I knew that I would be observed by this lady who works for the district. I was a lot more detailed with my lesson plan than I normally am, writing down specific discussion questions whereas before I would just write 'discussion' and try to think of questions on the spot. I also went through the lesson several times in my head before so I knew exactly how it was going to run. During the lesson, I held my journal with my lesson plan in it so that I could glance at it whenever I needed to, whereas before I would try to just memorize it and "wing" it if I forgot a section. I found that holding my journal doesn't take away from my teaching at all, which is what I was originally afraid of because I wanted to look "natural" without having notes in front of me. My students barely even noticed it.

I know you might be thinking why the heck haven't I been doing all these things already. I do admit that it probably shouldn't have taken an observer for me to be more prepared for my lessons, but now I know at least!

Using the board to list things was also really effective. So for example, I asked my students to come up with rules for our upcoming bike ride for me to list on the board. They could just say whatever they thought of, and didn't have to raise their hand unless it got too out of hand. If my students weren't able to think of anything for a while, I could just write down a rule that I had prepared beforehand.

The Bad:
This is all the stuff that didn't go so well. So for example, I have this bad habit of always responding to every comment my students make, even if its in the middle of me explaining something. Obviously this is distracting from the lesson.

Changes for next lesson: This is where I take the good and the bad and turn them into specific changes that I can implement for my next lesson.

• Stop responding to every comment my students make. Stick to the lesson plan, don't get distracted. 
• In planning, be more detailed. Plan out everything, not just the big things. Run lesson plan several times through head.
• During lesson, have journal in hand or in easy reach to check plan whenever I need to.
• This didn't come from "good" or "bad" but I'm including it anyway because I know it's effective. After giving instructions ask questions with one word answers to make sure they understand an activity. (Eg. "How many places are we brainstorming?" 2. "How much time do we have?" 5 minutes.)
• Utilize the board more. Have students think of things to list, but make sure I have some things of my own I can list whenever students can't think of anything.

So that's all for now. I think it would be kind of cool to have my blog posts be my reflections, and you guys can comment on whatever you think I should change. That probably means I need to tell you guys more about what it is I'm actually teaching. I'll save that for my next blog post!