DEPARTMENT
EDUCATION AND TRAINING
OF
Reflective Self-Evaluation
Class/Lesson:__Year 7 Mathematics_______ Date:__25/09/2012________
During the course you are assessed on your ability to evaluate your own lessons and
lesson plans. You may want to discuss the reflection with your Mentor teacher. Reflections
can be used in your portfolio along with your lesson plans and Mentor teachers written
feedback.
What were the main outcomes of your lesson and to what extent did you achieve
them?
The students had previously learnt to assign a descriptive word to probabilities, such as
likely, unlikely, certain etc. In this lesson I was to teach them how to assign a numerical
value to a probability.
The lesson was broken into three parts:
1) Opening explanation and discussion on assigning numbers to probabilities,
including an explanation of the probability formula
2) Completing two experiments; pulling a card from the deck at random and
selecting a coloured counter out of a hat at random.
3) Answering the questions on the worksheet supplied.
What were the 2 most successful aspects of the lesson and your lesson plan in
terms of:
Your development as a teacher?
This class is quite loud and easily disrupted. Initially I was going to ask them to break into
groups of five, and to complete the experiments in those groups all at once. Considering
the lesson was in period six, the last of the day, I thought that they might not be able to
focus well enough to complete a group tasks without constant direct supervision. Thus I
changed my lesson plan so that we completed the card experiment together as a class,
and then students went on to complete the questions relating to the cards as I went around
to each group and completed the counter experiment with that group separately.
Having students doing different things to other students was a bit interesting. They all
worked quite well, but I had to work hard at keeping them all on track on their respective
tasks. I felt like I stayed on top of this quite successfully. The times when students weren’t
working well was because I had failed to explain the task clearly.
What did the learners gain from the lesson?
The students had fun with the experiments and were definitely engaged the entire time.
They made the connection between there being more blue counters than yellow and then
competed for who could select a yellow counter. Thus the “likely/unlikely” idea is
cementing well.
Most students also understood the idea that if the counters aren’t placed back into the hat,
the denominator in the probability equation is reduced each round. I didn’t expect all
Based on CELTA feedback form
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students to understand this, but I did add a couple of questions like this to extend the
students who get through their work easily.
Were there any aspects of your lesson and/or lesson plan that were less
successful? Why do you think this was? If you were to teach the same lesson again,
what 2 changes would you make? Why?
I did not explain the probability formula at the start of the lesson. It was written on their
worksheet, but I did not verbally go through it, or go through an example with them. About
half way through the class I realised that some students were still writing “likely/unlikely” as
their answers and thus needed more explanation of what the task required. This was a
major oversight on my part. I assumed far too much in relation to their independent
learning skills. At this point I interrupted the class and went through one of the questions
on card selection with them to show them how to use the formula. After this some of the
brighter students could answer the simpler questions with ease.
Change 1: Spend more time at the start of the lesson explaining how to assign numbers to
probabilities and how these numbers relate to the descriptive words they have been using.
Change 2: This lesson would have been better as a double. This class doesn’t have
double math lessons on their timetable. But if there was more time I could have expanded
the explanation, gone through an example and taken more time with the experiments. This
also would have allowed more time to make connections from the experiments to the
related questions.
I was definitely too ambitious in planning this lesson.
What 2 aspects of your teaching and/or planning do you intend to work on in the
next lesson?
Next lesson I will spend time expanding on what we rushed through in this lesson. I will
unpack the probability formula, do a few examples as a class, make sure they understand
the connection between the counter and card experiments and the examples that we do. I
will then set questions that require that the students first answer the question with a
“likely/unlikely” description, then calculate the numerical probability, and then consider the
association between the word and the numerical description of probabilities.
I will also ensure that I don’t move too quickly for the slower students. This class has very
bright students and a few special needs students, so the range of ability is very broad.
Considering each child’s pace has been a challenge. I will continue to work on this.
What 2 questions would you like to ask your Mentor/colleagues in feedback?
The students did not meet the learning outcomes that I planned for them. How do I back
track to where the students are at, without scrapping everything we did in this lesson?
What are some techniques to use when planning for a class of very diverse learning
abilities? This is a general question, but would greatly impact the way I plan every lesson.
1. Summary of discussion with Mentor Teacher (Preservice teacher to notate)
My mentor was very helpful with this. While the students were fine, reasonably wellbehaved and were fully engaged, this was not a good lesson for me. It was very poorly
executed, in spite of the fact that I felt as though I was very prepared and that it was an
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interesting lesson. I was quite excited about this lesson and then thoroughly disappointed
with the outcome. My mentor explained how I can use the worksheet I had put together to
recap assigning numbers to probabilities and suggested that I continue linking the words
associated with probability to the numbers they calculate.
2. Preservice teacher personal reflection
I was very disappointed. I felt well prepared, I knew the content well, and I thought it would
be an interesting class. But I failed to explain the task correctly, and did not make clear
connections between the theory and the experiments. On reflection, I have realised that
teaching is a fluid profession, not a “one-shot” environment. I can take the ideas of this
lesson and expand on them in the next lesson. Just because this lesson did not work as
well as planned, all is not lost. While it is important to ensure the class makes their way
through the required curriculum, it is all a process. I can respond to this by adjusting my
plan for next lesson and not repeat these same mistakes again in the future.