US OBSERVATION REFLECTION #2 (VNOTE)

*Discuss student learning. What did students learn? Provide evidence for this learning (discuss student work, observation data, video, etc.). How do you know that students learned?

For this lesson, I was taught my students about some of the fast changes to the earth's surface that includes volcanoes and earthquakes. We reviewed the vocabulary words that they had previously learned in the beginning of the chapter and made kinesthetic vocabulary to go along with the terms that they were mastering that day. This is the way that I know that the students are understanding the terms based upon how well their movements connect with the idea of the vocabulary. Afterwards, I showed the students a large volcano model that I had created and explained to them that later on in the week, they would be making their own models. For the last part of the lesson, I showed them a Bill Nye video about volcanoes and asked them before hand to think about what ways the fast changes in the video changed the surface of the earth (volcanoes- can cause fires, create new land, destroy things nearby). This served as a formative assessment in which I gauged the students learning based upon their responses.

*What was your goal(s) for this lesson? What were you coding for? (HOT questions? Student behaviors? etc.)

For this lesson, my goal connected to my inquiry was to see how many times the students disrupted/ got off task and what strategy did I mostly use to deal with their behavior. I wanted to see where the trends lied in my students behavior during certain parts of my lesson, especially during the kinesthetic vocabulary parts. I wanted to see how engaged my students became and how long their engagement lasted after the activity was over. Did anything else spark their engagement after the k.v. activity? How did their engagement help their behavior management?

*What did you learn from engaging in V-note video coding?

In my video I was coding for four different things; how many times I used attention-getters for the whole class, how many times I had to redirect a student or several students, how many times I praised students, and also how many times a student called out and disrupted the flow of the lesson. Based upon my coding, I learned a few things about my teaching style and how my students relate to it. I usually used attention getters in the beginning of each new transition. Before coding, I thought I would see more attention-getters in the middle of my lessons, but I instead used redirection of specific students instead of the whole class. The first attention-getter that you see in blue in the photo shows that this last a long time. I used a strategy in which I praised the students who were showing me that they were ready to move on in the lesson to get the attention of those who were not. I put this as an attention instead of praise because the purpose of it was to get the whole class focused on what they were supposed to be doing which was showing that they were ready for the lesson.

Some other trends that I saw was that I often gave praise to the students after I asked them to share with the class. This showed up a lot in my coding because I would often pick on students to share their thoughts and also the movements that they created for the vocabulary.

Many of the student interruptions were caused mostly by the same 1 or 2 students but I realized that I didn't redirect them often. I think that this was mostly because I didn't want the flow of the lesson to be disrupted as well and all the other students get sidetracked.

*Do you feel like V-note helped you in your lesson goal? Explain.

I don't think that V-note really helped me fufill my lesson goal but it did make it very evident to me were most of my classroom management skills lie. I praise my students more than redirect them which shows that I am using more of a positive approach when it comes to behavior management. I try to encourage my students to participate and get on task by complimenting others which is a great strategy to use for such young students who are still interested in showing behaviors that the teacher wants.

*After coding and analyzing your video, is there anything you would change in your lesson? What? Why?

After watching my video, the only thing that I would really change after watching the video would be the sequence in which I had my lesson. I think that the students became to excited with the site of the volcano and I should've used that as my attention-getter instead. It was weird to put that in the middle of the lesson. The video would've gone well before the kinesthetic vocabulary as well because the would've seen images of a volcano erupting to better help them come up with movements. Overall, the lesson went well. V-note gave me better insight as to what type of behavior management method I sway towards most.