SELF-ASSESSMENT: SOLAR SYSTEM UNIT-DAY ONE

Name: Amanda Dlugi

Lesson topic: Introduction to the Solar System: The Size and Scale of
Planets

Date: 03/19/13
School/grade level/ number of students: Audubon High School/10 th12th/ ~15
Name of Cooperating Teacher: Brian Coffey

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.
Prior to developing my three consecutive lessons, I had met with my
cooperating teacher the previous week to discuss the topic that I would be
teaching, as well as the objectives that he would like for the students to
meet in relation to this topic. He informed me that I would teaching an
introduction to the solar system, and that he would like the following
objectives to be met by the students: size of scale of planets in comparison
to the Earth and Sun, composition and conditions of the planets, and orbital
period and rotation of planets. Because my own knowledge level on these
concepts was completely zero, I began to develop an understanding of each
objective separately for each of the three days, so I first began to teach

myself about the size and scale of our planets in our solar system. Through
doing this, I was then able to determine the instructional approaches I
thought would be effective to convey this concept to the students. I decided
that since I would be introducing a unit to the students, that a KWL format
for a warm-up exercise would be effective, and after completing this lesson, I
was beyond pleased with its effectiveness. After allowing the students time
to first attempt to draw our solar system on a sheet of paper in size and
scale, as well as fill out a KWL chart individually, this overall exercise lead
for an outstanding and engaging classroom discussion of the majority of the
learners in the class. I was beyond pleased.
After the warm-up exercise, the in-class discussion with the students
continued as I walked them through a brief review of the solar system. I
really enjoyed the engagement of the students, as well as hearing the
thoughts of almost every learner in the class.
Following the brief review, I had assigned the students to work on an
in-class project of developing a size and scale model of the solar system.
When I had prepared my lesson, I felt that I would include a more hands-on
and team work exercise for the students to work on together in order to
create and directly observe this concept in front of them. This exercise was
overall engaging for the students, and they worked very well on the activity.
Difficulty arose toward the end of my lesson, and adjustments were
needed to be made. Several students had gone on a field trip and had
showed up significantly late to class. I tried to address this situation in the

most appropriate way possible by having students present continue to work

on the size and scale model activity, while I took the time to do a brief review
with the students that had showed up late. I then was able to place these
students in groups.
Another error that arose was that I was not able to effectively
determine the amount of time needed for me to complete this exercise with
the learners, and it took longer than expected. I was sure to get the
students to clean up in a time that allowed for them to watch a quick video
overview of what they were accomplishing. Each of the groups overall were
able to accomplish building a size model, however, were unable to begin the
scaling process, so I made adjustments on my feet and informed the
students that they would be given the time to complete this project the
following day. This also impacted my plan of assessment of the students by
assigning follow-up questions, so I had chosen to use these as a warm-up
exercise the following day.

Classroom environment: Evaluate the ways in which your

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?

In the instructional strategies I described above, I believe that not only

did they allow for a comfortable and engaging learning environment, but also
it allowed for students to participate and interact not only individually with
me, but also in small groups and with the class as a whole. I really felt that
the organization of my lesson was carefully thought out to permit all forms of
student interaction.
Overall, I feel that I could improve on the eliciting student responses by
opening them up to the class as a whole more often than myself agreeing
with them first in order to allow for students to more actively engage in each
others thoughts.

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?
Overall, I was satisfied with my choice of instructional strategies
because I believe that I had thoughtfully included aspects to respect all types
of learners, as well as effectively encouraged student participation overall
had a positive impact on the majority of the students.
I feel majority of students needs were met during my lesson.
Unfortunately, the students that I described above that were late, did fall
behind, and sadly did not get to have the full experience that I had prepared
for the learners, but I had attempted to catch them up in the most efficient

way possible before instructing them to move on the creating a size and
scale model with the remainder of the students.
I had briefly mentioned some of the changes I would make if doing this
lesson again above, but again, these changes involve the following: better
organization and determination of the time needed for particular exercises
and also improvement in responding to the responses of the students.

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?

I began my lesson with my ritual of a DNA: Do Now Activity, however,

developed this informal assessment in a KWL format because I was
introducing a new topic to the students, and wanted to be able to observe
their current levels of understanding prior to instruction. I mentioned above
in more detail my reasoning and description of this activity, but overall, I
really feel that I was able to effectively pre-assess students individually
through listening to their responses, and having them share their own
thoughts prior to sharing with them the objectives that we plan to learn.
I briefly mentioned that I was planning to assign follow up questions to
the students pertaining to the concept of size and scale, however, the

students were not able to complete their size and scale models, so I
determined that it would be more effective if I waited, and used this as a
form of pre-assessment the following day before the students continued the
scaling portion of their projects. I really feel that waiting until the next day
was more effective because I was then able to determine which of the
students were able to grasp the previous days material, and which still
needed more practice or were not confident to share their thoughts on the
material.
A final form of assessment that I believe I was effectively able to
receive through this lesson would be my new method of tracking informal
assessment of student participation and behavior through a recording
device. I believe that I was really effectively able to collect this information
of the students during the warm-up exercise, however, after reflecting now, I
really wish I would have thought to continue to monitor the students using
this device during the beginning of their size and scale activity, however, I
felt that there was so much going on that I needed to attend to, that tracking
did not seem to be the most essential exercise for me to be doing while
trying to complete other tasks of organization and clarification to the
students first and foremost during the exercise. This is a practice I need to
further improve on: being able to multi-task more efficiently.

Professional responsibilities: What did you learn from your

cooperating teachers feedback on this lesson? How will you apply it
to future lessons?
Upon completing this lesson, my cooperating teacher provided
me with a list of quite helpful, written feedback. Within his feedback,
some of the information that I believe is going to be most helpful when
developing my future lessons involves eliciting student responses. It
will be a good practice for me to engage the classroom as active
listeners to their peers by asking the class if they agree or disagree
with the students responses prior to me ensuring a correct answer to
the class. He also mentioned how constructing an answer as a class
can be slower, but it is more engaging for students if you can a lot the
time do to this. I really appreciate these thoughts, and I also really
hope to be able to improve in my management of time during my
lessons, and being able to more effectively determine the time
requirements when planning in-class, hands-on, group activities.
Reflection: What did you learn about student learning and assessing
from this lesson? How will it affect your planning for future
teaching?
When I assessed the learners the following day with the handout of
follow up questions I had created pertaining to the size and scale model I had
instructed for them to create, I was pleased with the responses I received
from students as a whole and individually. Also, I was able to encouraged

students individually to record the correct responses to have for their

references. I was very pleased with what I was able to determine about how
well the students were able to meet the objectives I had set for them.

SELF-ASSESSMENT: SOLAR SYSTEM UNIT-DAY TWO

Name: Amanda Dlugi
Lesson topic: Introduction to the Solar System: The Size and Scale
Continued, and The Composition of Planets
Date: 03/20/13
School/grade level/ number of students: Audubon High School/ 10th12th/~15
Name of Cooperating Teacher: Brian Coffey

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.
In order to make proper preparations for the lesson, the second of my
three consecutive lessons, the original plans that I had discussed with my
cooperating teacher needed to change because the students did not
complete the activity from the previous day on size and scale. My
cooperating teacher and I decided to omit the objective of orbital paths of
the planets from the three day lessons because he felt the students already
had developed a good understanding of planetary motion because it was a
topic we covered in a previous unit.

Overall, I feel that though there was a change in plans, I really felt that
this lesson still had a lot of potential in providing students with opportunities
for actively engaging in the material.
I decided to use the assessment piece that I had originally prepared for
the previous lesson as a warm-up for this lesson. Because the students were
not able to finish their models yet, the students would only be able to
attempt to answer the first six questions on the sheet, which I believe was a
great way to pre-assess the knowledge level of the students individually on
the material which we had covered the previous day before completing the
models and also starting a new topic, as well as allow for them to discuss this
material with their classmates in a discussion when we went through them
together.
After the warm-up exercise, I instructed students to complete their size
and scale model of the solar system, followed by completing the remainder
of the questions on the follow up question work sheet individually. We then
reviewed these questions together as a class before moving on to a new
topic. When reviewing the material, in order to reach out to the diverse
learners in the class, I had chosen to incorporate new mnemonic device that
included the Spanish language into the learning. I really enjoyed this
adjustment to my lesson because I really feel like I was able to engage the
classroom by some of the students being in confusion and asking their
Spanish speaking classmates to clarify for them the meaning of a Spanish

word in the mnemonic device to help them remember the order of size of the
planets.
Prior to beginning a new topic, I guided the students to stand up, stretch,
and move around a little bit. I then allowed students to begin research on
new topic for remaining minutes of class and informed them that there would
be a quiz the following day, so to remember to take the folders I provided
them with home to study the materials we had covered thus far.

Classroom environment: Evaluate the ways in which your

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 mentioned above the use of the follow up questions as the
DNA: Do Now Activity warm-up. This allowed for students to assess
themselves on the previous learned concepts individually, as well as
have the opportunity to share their thoughts with their classmates.
Since the students were continuing to work on their size and scale
models of the solar system from the previous day, they were again
provided with the chance to be able to work in teams and share
thoughts in small groups.
Once all groups were completed with their models, students were
instructed to complete the remainder of the questions individually, and

then we came back to class as a whole to share findings in a class

discussion. The last instructional procedure allowed students to begin
individual work on a new activity on composition of planets.
Overall, I liked that my lesson was able to provide students with
the opportunities to work and participate in different ways both
individually and in groups. I really feel that this was also effective for
me to be able to provide feedback and clarifications to individual
students, as well as small groups. I really feel that throughout my
lesson, the students were completely involved in each particular task
that we planned to accomplish that day.
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?
Overall, I liked the organization of the instructional strategies
that I chose above; however, difficulty really arose with the time pacing
of this lesson. The majority of the hour, students finished their size
and scale models, and then the remaining time went toward a new
activity involving composition of planets. However, the issue with this
was that I had verbally set a time limit for students to work, but I was
so busy working with and monitoring the progress of the individual
groups that I had lost track of the time I had allotted myself, and the
students still needed more time to complete their models. I then gave
them additional time, and addressed this to them. If I were to redo this

lesson, I would now have an estimated time of approximately how long

the size and scale model activity would take students because I had
incorrectly interpreted this time period during my first attempt at
teaching it. However, my cooperating teacher was very understanding
and willing with adjustments of my lesson planning, and allowed for me
to just cover two out of the three we had originally discussed for the
introduction to the solar system three consecutive lessons. Because
the previous unit taught to the students involved laws of planetary
motion, he felt that his students had already grasped this concept well,
and that it was okay that I didnt include it at this time again, and to
mainly focus on making sure the students understood size and scale of
our solar system, and composition of the planets.
Aside from the complications I described above, I feel that my
instructional strategies had the impact that I had hoped they would, as
well as reached out to the needs of all learners, including through
incorporating a second, native language, to some of the learners in the
classroom.

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?

A first assessment piece which I have mentioned was the choice

to use the follow up questions to the size and scale of the solar system
both before and after activity was completed. This overall severed as a
great way to allow for the students to work individually and participate
in discussion with their classmates. Also, it was a great way for me to
assess the understanding levels of the students on the material.
I was sure to tell the students to prepare for a formal quiz on the
material thus far the following day.
Unfortunately, my use of informal assessment tracking device
was very poor this lesson. Because I was so concerned with facilitating
the students through the remainder of the size and scale activity, it
had completely slipped my mind to record informal data on the
students aside from the warm-up activity. This was really unfortunate;
however, I knew that I would for sure be able to test the students
understanding of all of these concepts individually the following day on
the quiz.

Professional responsibilities: What did you learn from your

cooperating teachers feedback on this lesson? How will you apply it
to future lessons?
One of the main ideas that my cooperating teacher provided me with
on his written feedback involves clearer direction prior to allowing students
to break off into their groups. I could see this aspect of his feedback as an
area can be helpful to keep in mind when preparing future lessons, to be

more aware of how I direct students to important materials and supplies prior
to getting them separated in order to maintain a better focus on the task.

Reflection: What did you learn about student learning and assessing
from this lesson? How will it affect your planning for future
teaching?
I was pleased to see that the understanding levels of the students
seemed pretty consistent with the objectives that I had hoped they would
reach through reviewing the assessment techniques I used with them.
Overall, I need to practice incorporating my tracking devices in more efficient
manner in order to obtain more effective data. I lost focus of this during my
lesson, and hardly received any information on the student through this form
of assessment. This overall was really unfortunate, so I hope to continue to
learn how to do this more successfully because it really will be beneficial for
me to be able to determine not only student participation and behavior for
that day, but also to make inferences on the understanding levels of the
students.

SELF-ASSESSMENT: SOLAR SYSTEM UNIT-DAY

THREE
Name: Amanda Dlugi
Lesson topic: Astronomy: Introduction to the Solar System:
Composition of the Planets
Date: 03/21/13
School/grade level/ number of students: Audubon High School/10 th12th/ ~15
Name of Cooperating Teacher: Brian Coffey

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.
In my opinion, using a warm-up exercise is always a great
instructional strategy to not only allow for students to have the
opportunity to work individually and with the class as a whole, but also
to be able to increase participation within the class. I also believe a
warm-up is a great way to get the students focused and engaged in
previously learned material. A way that I provided for learners in the
class was to not only post the warm-up questions on the board, but
also, I was sure to read them out loud as well. Overall, the

adjustments that I had made to my plan were to be able to have the

students be able to take my assessment piece, a written paper and
pencil quiz on the material they have learned over the previous two
days, as well as a lot the time to finish a project the students had
briefly began the previous day.
Classroom environment: Evaluate the ways in which your
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 mainly verbally encouraged students to participate, as well as
share their thoughts. I really do feel I need to practice eliciting
students to respond more effectively to each other, prior to myself
commenting on the students responses in order to allow for the
students to maintain active listening to each other and myself. Overall,
I believe that one of my strengths is always incorporating opportunities
for the students to work individually, in small groups, and with the
class as whole, which overall is really effective to give the students to
chance to be able to develop in interaction in different situations.

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?
Overall, I enjoyed the instructional strategies I chose for this
particular lesson, and I feel that for the majority of the learners that
they were effective, however, I feel I could approached some aspects
of my lesson in different ways which overall could have made for a
more successful lesson. A first example of a change I would make if I
were to repeat this lesson would be to divide the class up to work when
working on the project. I feel that it would have been more effective
with time by dividing the classroom in half, and have half the students
do research on the composition and conditions of the first four planets
from the Sun, as well as the other half of the class room do the last
four planets. Students from each side of the class then could have had
the opportunity to share their thoughts, research, and drawings with
the other side of the class so that all students could get all the
information and potentially teach each other the material. I believe this
would have also lead for there to be a more effective discussion at the
end of the activity, and allowed for us to have more time to focus on
the reason for why the planets are composed the way they are, rather
than rushing to do so in the last five minutes of class. Overall, this
organization could have greatly benefitted my lesson for the students.
Other changes that I would make to my lesson involve the quiz
that I issued. I wish that I would have instructed prior to handing out
the quiz that once the learners complete the quiz, to go ahead and

work on the task that they had begun the previous day. Overall, I
believe this would have been more efficient than walking around to
collect the quizzes by hand and instruct each individually what to do
next. Next, I wish that I would not have chosen to grade the quizzes
right away because I had not had the time to finish them, and I could
have monitored the students progress more effectively than I had.
Also, when grading the quizzes, I wish that I would have weighted the
points to some of the questions differently, because I feel that
sometimes this was not as accurate as I had hoped. Lastly, I wish I
would have proofread the quiz more carefully because there was one
major typo. Unfortunately, I had noticed this right when the students
had begun the quiz, and had chosen to verbally announce the
correction to the class. Looking back, it would have been much more
effective to also have written this correction on the board in order to
accommodate all types of learners that are in the classroom, not just
those who are auditory learners.
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?
I was quite pleased with how the assessment piece I developed
worked. It aligned directly with the objectives the students had been

expected to meet over the course of three days, and the final product was a
clear representation of students understanding levels of the material.
Overall, the students that participated well in-class, attended class,
and completed all their work over the previous two days had shown
consistently high scores on the assessment. Students that were not readily
attending class or actively participating in class showed moderate to low
scores on the assessment. Overall, I was quite pleased with these results
because on top of observing student achievement over the past three days, I
was able to also observe if the instructional procedures I had chosen to
convey the material to the students appeared to be overall effective. I
overall wish that all of the students could have attain a rich learning
experience, however, if they chose not to attend class, this had directly
shown to negatively impacted their performance on the assessment.

Professional responsibilities: What did you learn from your

cooperating teachers feedback on this lesson? How will you apply it
to future lessons?
An important piece of feedback that my cooperating teacher
recommended which I believe will be extremely helpful with future lessons
that I chose to create that involves internet research would be to ask the
students where they were finding their information, and then explore with
the class reasons why information can vary on multiple sources, as well as

which source they would believe to be the most efficient and reliable source
to be using.

Reflection: What did you learn about student learning and assessing
from this lesson? How will it affect your planning for future
teaching?
Overall, I really seen a great relationship between student learning and
assessment because overall, the more actively engaged, punctual, and
productive the students were in class over the past two days I had taught
them, generally, the better the students were able to perform when it came
time for an assessment. When it comes to my future lessons, I hope to be
able to continue to stress the importance of participation in class to all of the
learners, as well as I hope to be able to incorporate different forms of
assessment pieces that align directly with the outcomes I hope for the
students in order to not only accommodate all of the learners, but also to be
able to determine if the students were able to meet the objectives I had
hoped for them to reach.