Lesson Self- Assessment 2 (Videoed)

Name: Kerry Seiberlich

Lesson topic: Scale Factor
Date: 10/14/15
School/grade level/ number of students: Milwaukee College Prep, 38th St Gr. 7 27 students
Name of Cooperating Teacher: Grace Chamberlain

Planning and preparation: Describe how your plan provided opportunities for active
engagement. How did you provide for the needs of diverse learners? Did you adjust your plan in
any way? Describe how and why if you did.
The lesson itself was a review in scale factor, based on an activity which required group
work and discussion. By having the students work in groups, those that struggled with the
content were able to benefit from having a more expert other at hand, while the more expert
other benefitted from solidifying their knowledge through teaching. All students organized their
thinking through communication, a tenet of Vygotskys Socio-linguistics, by discussing the
problem-solving process in small groups and as a class.
I did have to adjust my plan; I had originally incorporated a second activity. I realized
during the first activity, however, that the students probably werent prepared for the second half,
and as a result, we cut the lesson short so that my CT could work with them on the new content
from the workbook she is required to follow for curriculum. The first activity had them working
with whole numbers in scaling up. However, the second activity, which required them to scale
something down, demanded that they work with fractions and/or decimals as their scale factor
this is something they will learn next week.

Classroom environment: Evaluate the ways in which you encouraged student participation.
How did you elicit student responses? How did you engage them in responding to you and each
other? Evaluate your plan for individual, small group and/or whole class work. How effective
were these different organizational techniques for keeping students involved in your lesson?
I encouraged student participation by framing the activity in groups of three, which I felt
to be mostly right for the lesson. There were a few cases in which just one or none of the
students did the work, though. In these cases, I stopped by those groups and elicited participation
by using targeted questions that would prompt students problem-solving skills. Questions such
as, What information do you need? and How can you get that information based on what you
already have? were used more than once, as many students struggled to work through the multistep problem.

Instruction: Evaluate your choices of instructional strategies. Did they have the effect you
intended? Were the needs of all learners met? What changes would you make if you repeated this
lesson?
If I were to repeat the lesson, I would try to eke more knowledge about where the
students are in learning scale factor from my CT so that my activities could be more relevant to
what the students know. However, I feel that my choice of activity was effective in helping
students to solidify their understanding of how to scale images up in size based on a scale factor.
There were a few students who breezed through the activity, but by prompting group members
who were less comfortable with the material, I drew the high-fliers in to explain their thinking
as more expert others for their peers, rather than leaving them to their own devices while other
groups continued to work.
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Assessment: What assessment processes did you plan and how did they work? What did you
learn from listening to student responses, examining their work or listening to their interactions?
How well did your assessment procedures inform you about student attainment of your lessons
objectives?
The activity was, in itself, a performance-based assessment, and it seemed to work well. I
collected the students notes afterward, and was able to see that once I went through the problemsolving process with the class, students were able to effectively apply their quantitative literacy
skills to find the correct answer. However, it was clear from the discussions that while their skills
were strong, their problem-solving was not. If I were to suggest an upcoming objective to my
CT, it would be to strengthen student perseverance and problem-solving; they can do plenty of
operations, but they just dont know when to use them.

Professional responsibilities: What did you learn from your cooperating teachers feedback on
this lesson? How will you apply it to future lessons?
My CT suggested in her feedback that I list the steps to solve the problem earlier rather
than later. Im not sure I entirely agree, but I can see her point my intention while planning was
to have students problem-solve their way through the activity. However, I realize now that I may
have been asking too much of them in this. Next time, while I might still have students try to
determine the steps to solving a difficult problem on their own, I wont let them stew on it for
quite as long as I did.

Reflection: What did you learn about student learning and assessing from this lesson? How will
it affect your planning for future teaching?
My understanding of the relationship between student learning and assessing was mostly just
affirmed in this lesson. The student work I collected for assessment allowed me to diagnose their
strengths and weaknesses as a group and as individuals essential knowledge if I am to support their
learning in the future. As a result, I know that in the future I will certainly incorporate more opportunities
for this class to practice their problem-solving, as I know it is a skill that will serve them well; they just
need to strengthen it!