Madeline Colvin

EDML 573
Hot/Cold Lesson Assignment
11/19/2018
ELA Hot/Cold Lesson Assignment
The lesson I used for my hot and cold assignment was on summarizing, paraphrasing, and

creating direct quotes. The lesson seemed to have its mixture of hot and cold moments

throughout it. When I reviewed the feedback I had gotten from my coaching teacher, my

supervisor, and watching myself be filmed, I found some areas in my lesson that went well and

areas that I could improve in later lessons. I sorted these things into 3 segments: participation,

guided practice, and the exit slips.

I pulled small groups of 10 to 13 students in both blocks and had planned for 3 small

groups; however, three small groups seemed to be too much and too tight on time so I only

taught 2 small groups. I chose the students based off of pre-assessments they completed a few

weeks prior. Additionally, since there is a double classroom, it is easy to have distractions which

are why the small group table is a must. The students were gathered around the table and were

given guided notes. I explained how the guided notes were to be done when I assessed that

students may have been confused on what or where to write (1:17). I originally planned to show

a video, but YouTube was not working in my coaching teacher's classroom. Not having the video

prepared or seeing if it would work first is a cold moment in my lesson. I have been taught to

always prepare for something to not work, and this time I did not. Instead of watching the video,

we jumped right into the lesson which was roughly 15 to 18 minutes long. In between the small

groups, I met with students who were not in the lesson to check in on them.

In my lesson, there were good amounts of participation from the students. This is

definitely a hot part of my lesson. At (3:30 and 7:20) you can see students actively engaging in
the lesson. Most of the students decided to participate and attempt to answer the guiding

questions. I felt like a hot part of my lesson were my guiding question (17:30). My small

prompts helped them develop ideas and formulate the information they would include in their

summaries. Nevertheless, there were a few students who did not want to participate. When I

asked the students to initially come to my lesson, I told them it was based on their pre-

assessment. A few students looked shocked and said, “Oh! I know this stuff, but I put ‘IDK’ on

all the questions.” I then proceeded to explain that that made it seem like they did not know the

information and therefore they were pulled for the lesson.

Another student in a different small group repeatedly does not do his work and he

decided to not follow along with the guided notes. I chose to refer back to the readings in

classroom management where the student may have a lot of things going on in their life. Keeping

this in mind, I decided to encourage the student multiple times to do their guided notes, but since

he was not causing a distraction, I just kept going with my lesson. In the small group that I have

submitted for viewing, the engagement is great. This is a hot part of my lesson, but I have been

given feedback that I could have made this better. A cold part of my lesson with participation

was that I felt alienated from the students since I was standing over them. I could have sat at the

table and be at eye level with the students instead of looming over the students. Also watching

my lesson helped me see that there was a student who really wanted to share their example and I

must have not seen him. (21:30). I never want to discourage a student from sharing their work, so

seeing that really helped me reflect on my teaching. I might also have had them more involved in

annotating and searching the text. This ties into my next area that I saw I could improve.

The guided practice in my lesson could have been better. As I previously mentioned, I

could have increased participation by making it less of a lecture. The cold part of participation
lead into the cold parts of guided practice. I could have had the students annotated the text to

identify the main idea and key pieces of evidence. I was advised that for my next lesson to really

get students to think critically and independently. A strategy I could utilize to increase

engagement is to incorporate technology. In my internship, I am required to include technology

in one of my lessons. I was also advised to use technology wisely in my social studies methods

course. A way I could better this lesson is to have students have the text on their Chromebooks

and annotate on the document. They could then have a joint document where they input their

own summary, paraphrase, and direct quote. In my lesson, we only looked one example of

paraphrasing when we could have looked at more (8:20).

Nevertheless, a hot part of my lesson was my modeling for thinking. An instructional

strategy that I used was modeling metacognitive thinking. I told the students (8:50, 11:25) how I

went through the text to create a summary and paraphrase. I also had the students point out the

key points in the text to help the group come up with a summary. I thought this was a hot part of

my lesson because I could see that most of the students understood the material and were

applying it. In my future lessons, I will work on having student engaged more, but I am happy

about the participation I received during these lessons.

One strategy I used to assess students’ learning from the lesson was to observe their

participation and to observe their answers on their guided notes. I had two major exit slips. One

of my exit slips was a hand signal where students held up the number of fingers to demonstrate

their understanding. I had a picture of a stoplight and asked students how they felt at that point of

the lesson. (26:18) I realized I did not want 10 students yelling out colors so I quickly improvised

and had them hold up fingers. One was for green which meant total understanding, three was for

yellow which meant that the students somewhat understood the lesson, and five was red which
mean the student was totally confused. While this could have been super helpful, it could also

have been confusing. One student held up a three and that helped me to know who to conference

with; however, another student held up a three and was just confused on what the finger signals

meant.

Another formative assessment that I had was for students to tweet what they learned in

the lesson. This was not a real tweet but I was so caught up with making sure the recording of the

lesson and everything went well that I the tweet slipped my mind. I should have had the students

pair up and share what they wrote and then have them share with the group. (26:33). This way

the tweet was not for nothing. I used these assessment strategies to see how students were doing

in the lesson. Also, while I explained the follow-up work, none of the students turned it in. My

coaching teacher had a similar follow-up work on the same information so the students did not

get that there were to different worksheets. Because of this, I will be assessing the work that they

have turned in to see how they apply their knowledge on summarizing, paraphrasing, and direct

quotes.

In conclusion, my lesson had some hot and some cold parts. The cold part of my lessons

has helped guide me on how to become a better educator. It was extremely helpful to watch

myself teach because I saw things I did not see before. I have grown this semester and I wish I

would have videotaped my first lesson to see how I have changed. I now have a better sense of

how to encourage participation, how to facilitate the lesson better, and how to properly assess

students.
Attached is the link on the hot and cold recorded lesson.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Yh7WwQlDptdy8M9LY6HRDt2MRoPQw5jQ/view?usp=sharing