The review was fairly simple, but I almost feel like it was too simple. Mirroring my CT's lesson meant that I did the same review with the second group. Our review was based off of the homework that they completed the night before. We chose to review these specific questions, because there were several questions that would be similar on their upcoming assessment, and we wanted to make sure that the students fully understood those concepts. When watching my video, I noticed that the students were responding to my questions, but most were also playing around with water bottles, talking to their neighbors, making faces, or many other very distracting things. What was confusing to me was that even though they were clearly not engaged, they were still able to provide me with correct and/or reasonable answers for my questions. This is the evidence that I am using to make the claim that the review was not challenging enough to keep the students engaged.
At this point, is when I started thinking about the purpose of a review and what that means for the students. I don't believe that a review should be excessively challenging. If the concepts are taught well in the initial lessons, then the review content should be fairly easy. So if making the review content more challenging is not the answer to increasing student engagement, then what is? After considering something I did with my 5th graders last year, I think I may have found a solution. Students like to compete, show what they've learned, work in teams, and challenge themselves and each other. I did a science review with my group last year and used an online resource, jeopardylabs.com, to create a jeopardy board review of important concepts. I split the students into teams, and they worked together to not only complete a review, but to compete in an engaging game of jeopardy. This makes me think that the next time I teach a review, I should plan to make some kind of competition out of it in order to increase engagement. I'm not sure that jeopardy would be the most appropriate for math, but maybe I could just split them into teams, give them word problems to solve, and time them to see which team finished first and could explain their reasoning. This would also give me some data regarding the students' math fluency, which I could record and use for future planning purposes.
Although I don't feel that the lesson was a great success, I do feel that I learned quite a bit about how I can improve future similar lessons. I think that being able to reflect on the experience and notice flaws can sometimes be just as beneficial as just having a successful lesson.
This reflective post is assisting in the completion of FEAP(s):
(a).1.e: Uses variety of data, independently and in collaboration with colleagues, to evaluate student learning outcomes, adjust planning, and continuously improve the effectiveness of lessons.
(b).5.a: Designs purposeful professional goals to strengthen the effectiveness of instruction based on students' needs.
(b).5.c: Uses variety of data, independently and in collaboration with colleagues, to evaluate student learning outcomes, adjust planning, and continuously improve the effectiveness of lessons.
(b).5.e: Engages in targeted professional growth opportunities and reflective practices.