7. Reflection and Self-Evaluation A.

Interpretation of Student Learning Most of the students in my class were successful in meeting the majority of the lesson objectives. I believe that the students success was directly related to my focusing the lesson on an objective and giving students plenty of time to complete assignments. The objective gave the students challenges, but the challenges were not impossible to complete. This focus on lesson objective gives students several opportunities to meet the objective throughout class and helps all the students, in a very large class, to make progress. However, as a direct result of the large class size, some students were able to avoid my feedback by staying toward the back of the room and participating minimally. This caused some students to not progress as much as they could have if they were fully participating in class. Because these students were not improving, I concentrated on one objective for too long, hoping that they would finally catch on. However, in hind sight, staying with one objective probably made the students more comfortable in their inactivity because they did not feel as though they were getting left behind. In assessment, while we did have a pre- and post-test, it is difficult to use the results as concrete evidence for improvement because the students did not take the same test both times. Those students with high writing skills had an advantage in the pre-test, while those with high creative and performance skills had an advantage in the post-test. Therefore, the assessment results cannot be used as indisputable data.

B. Insights on Effective Instruction and Assessment Based on results from the assessments, the most successful learning activities were the composition assignment activities. As students worked individually and in groups, they were able to apply the concepts we had learned in class in new ways. They created new movements that met the spatial requirements instead of mimicking the movements that I had created to demonstrate the spatial concepts from the unit. Because the assignment required critical thinking skills and inter-personal skills, I believe that there was greater concentration and motivation in most of the students. The observation of dance clips and journal activity completed for a pre-test was one of the least successful learning activities in the unit. Though a brief introduction to shaping was given before the clips were watched, I think that many students still did not understand the concept of having multiple categories of body shapes while we watched the clips. This learning activity could have been more effective if students had already experienced a movement-based introduction to shapes. In addition, while journaling can be very helpful to identify a students understanding of a certain concept, many of my students did not take the assignment seriously. They wrote silly answers that did not apply at all to why they had chosen certain categories of shapes, and some even copied directly off of one anothers papers. C. Implications for Future Teaching In this unit, I clearly linked the lesson content to the objectives, allowing students to concentrate on one new topic at a time. This helped the students to learn about the concept in several ways. I was effective at demonstration and planning. I also always had activities

prepared to keep students occupied and on task. My energy level was also good when teaching, which helped inspire the students to put forth more energy in their dancing. However, lesson content was sometimes not as challenging as it should have been. At first, I was hesitant to demand full participation, so my students were more able to goof off. As I continued teaching, I gave students real consequences for not participating and spoke with some individually. This has helped to improve the class concentration and participation over all. In the future, I will establish more clear expectations from the very beginning in regards to behavior. I will also be more aware of whether my students are bored with a concept or if they are struggling and need more time for mastery. D. Implications for Personal Professional Improvement As a teacher, it is important to build relationships with your students, other teachers, and school staff and administration. As I completed this unit, I noticed that I need to be more willing to have personal relationships with my students. I will work to improve my interpersonal skills through daily conversations with students as well as serving on multiple committees and boards such as the daCi and UDEO boards. In this way, I will develop connections that will render me more able to create conversation with new people that I meet. In addition, I was constantly in search of new and appropriate music throughout the unit. To enhance my music collection and find new ways of finding appropriate music, I will attend the National Association for Music Education conferences, which are every year in the summer. These conferences will help me to better understand music as well as network with

other teachers who are passionate about having the arts in schools. Eventually, I hope to be able to receive my music endorsement through taking evening classes.