tws section 7
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TWS Section 7
Reflection and Self-Evaluation
A. Interpretation of Student LearningStudents success is very much dependent on if they were in attendance to class every
day. Many students are absent in this class, one student has a child of their own to take care
of and is excused frequently but many others are habitual absentees. The reason I believe
that the students were most successful on the repetition form of abstraction is because it
was explained and reviewed twice, at the end of one class period and once again in the next
class period. The school bell rang in the middle of the initial explanation of different forms of
abstraction so we only started learning about repetition. Also, students were most successful
in correctly describing and making connections to writing a paragraph and the ABA
choreographic form because due to a fire drill we ended up spending two days on the
creation of ABA solos and performance. I see now that reviewing concepts over two days
not only solidifies understanding but also reaches the understanding of more students
because the attendance is spotty in the intermediate dance class. If a student isnt there one
day they are most likely there the next. But regardless of attendance students perform better
when they receive information multiple times in different methods.
The students also showed large improvement in the forms of abstraction because I was
able to use the forms of abstraction in each of the different choreographic forms we
discussed. As they created choreography within a certain structure I was always able to go
back again to the forms of abstraction to help them create more original movement. Though
the words for forms of abstraction were used often and written on a visual poster I never had
a poster listing the structures we explored. And though I had a poster for forms of
abstraction I dont think I left it up long enough. It was only up a few class periods when I
should have had it up the entire time. I feel the greatest barrier to recalling forms of
abstraction for some students was being able to spell the terms, this inhibited their recall. If I
had the poster up the entire unit and had the students read it and write it when I referred toit I believe they would have been able to spell and recall the forms better.
In the future when I do this unit I will have the students write more. This is especially
important for the spelling concern and for the English language learners. This unit lends itself
very well to supporting and encouraging English acquisition for ELL students. A daily journal
could have been set into place that allowed students to start writing about the connections
made in the choreography and the written form. This could have allowed more one-on-one
time with ELL students and prepared them better for a written quiz at the end of the unit as
well as new vocabulary and writing practice. One of the school goals is that every class has a
writing assignment each quarter. This shows the effort the school wishes to make to bring
students writing literacy up, and this unit could have certainly been utilized better to support
students writing ability.Looking at the graph of the performance of two individual students I recognized that
whether they were a low performing or high performing student the students increased the
success of their performance by 50%. This let me know that the curriculum was an
appropriate level and match for the intermediate class. There was something new for
everyone to learn and enough basics for the students with less experience to learn. This class
needs basics and extensions with every activity because the students are all coming from
different levels of experience.
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B. Insights on Effective Instruction and AssessmentThe most successful learning activity was when we sat together as a class and reviewed
on the white board what the structure was for a paragraph. We talked about the topic
sentence, the following body sentences that expounded on the topic sentence, and the
concluding sentence that didnt repeat the topic sentence exactly but relayed the same
message. We then labeled each part of the paragraph as A for topic sentence, B for body
sentences, and A for concluding sentence. Then I demonstrated for the students my own
paragraph and accompanying movement. The movement of my ABA solo was movement
they had experienced for the warm-up and was familiar to them so they could point out
how they recognized my A was different but still similar to my A. After modeling the
assignment I had the students create their own paragraph and create their own ABA solos
from them. Some students chose to write their paragraph down, and they were the most
successful in remembering and making connections. I will in the future require that
everyone do the writing portion as well. This will better help me assess them as well.
The least successful learning activity I had was explaining the rondo. The rondo was
introduced on the same day as the review for the quiz which was only the period before thequiz. The students had their heads full of so many other choreographic forms they had
explored that the rondo sort of fell to the side of their brain. I had the students create lines
for a RONDO poem, but I never showed them an example of a rondo poem and what it
might look like. This would have given them an idea of how A related to all the other parts
B,C,D,E, and so on. Nor did I let the students put their lines in the order of a rondo, I
collected their lines and created the rondo poem myself. The students could have had this
hand-on experience in building the structure of a rondo and it could have helped them
solidify the structure and connections of the rondo. The students lines of the poem were
meaningful because we spent a lot of time discussing the topic of the poem after watching a
TEDTalk YouTube clip, but the lack of opportunity for the students to create a rondo
themselves is evident in their low performance in describing rondo correctly in the postassessment.
C. Implications for Future TeachingIn future assessment plans for units I develop I will plan my pre assessment and post
assessment together from the start. I created the post assessment after the pre assessment
and then ended up with data that did not match exactly. It was still useful but would provide
more valid data and information if the two assessments lined up better. I think I wanted to
give the students a pre-assessment quiz that I felt they could feel at least a bit successful on.
But pre assessment isnt about trying to award points to students; pre assessment is to figure
out the patterns of students learning and their current performance level on the given unit
objectives. It is okay if the students dont know anything about the unit objectives; it is only
validation that the unit curriculum will be worthwhile covering with the students. I should
have created my pre assessment more with the end in mind.
The students didnt seem to have an internal need to organize the information they
were being given. The students were not aware of when the assessments were going to take
place and so they did not come to class every day with a clear objective of what they were
going to learn or what direction the class was progressing towards. In the future I would like
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to give the students at the beginning of the unit a big picture of what they can expect and in
what amount of time. I will share with them the unit objectives, rather than handing them
out samples of the overall unit objectives each day with my daily learning objectives. This will
also help students know that on a certain day they will be tested. I would hope if they knew
further in advance when they were going to be having a test that more students would have
been in class to take the post test.
I believe that the students had a greater understanding of ABA and ABA because of an
extension challenge I gave them to create more forms of choreography using letters as has
been done with ABA form. Their opportunity to create their own pattern of letters that
could be used for choreography solidified the idea of how the letter represents parts of
patterns. I will definitely try to create extension challenges for each activity in the future so I
can help students apply knowledge in multiple settings and tasks.
Methods that worked well and aided student success in recalling the forms of
abstraction were a slideshow presentation with visual art examples of the forms of
abstractions, a ladder activity where the students developed a motif by a different form of
abstraction at each level, and a writing activity where they wrote down in a list the four types
of abstraction and a poster that listed them to be read as well. The other choreographic
forms and connections tested in the pre and post assessment were not delivered by thismany modalities, only through choreography for the spring concert, and one note taking
review session before the final quiz. That may be why their performance on describing and
making connections to other writing structures was weaker than their performance on forms
of abstraction. In my future teaching I plan to create at least two or three different activities I
can use to present each unit learning objective to the students.
In the future I will laminate posters so I am not afraid to hang them on the wall for the
entirety of the unit. One of the things I neglected the most for my students was constant
visuals. I would put the slideshow up one day, pull the poster out another, and then never
had a poster that organized the choreographic forms we were exploring. In the future I will
keep a poster of all the vocabulary terms up throughout the entire unit so there is always a
visual resource and reminder for the students.
D. Implications for Personal Professional ImprovementIdentify at least two areas forimprovement that emerged during this unit. List and describe specific professional activities
you will engage in to improve your performance as a teacher in these areas.
An area for improvement would be in the rubrics and performance criteria used to
assess students who need written tests given orally because they are ELL students who
cannot write. As a novice teacher I feel my ability to assess a student with reading or writing
disability fairly in comparison to the other students is lacking. I offered the post assessment
orally to one student and found that I wanted to coach and teach rather than administer a
quiz. I knew the student understood the concepts from observation of their physical
performance so I was convinced they should be able to verbally describe the ideas to me but
their performance was less than satisfactory to me. So then I was left with the task of
awarding the individual student points on the same scale as the other students who took the
written quiz. This is a situation I can improve my methodology in. There must be a way that
you can fairly score students who need a quiz given in another form. Maybe there is a way to
synthesize observation of performance and a verbally written quiz into a rubric that awards
points with the same expectations of the written quiz. I have asked my cooperating teacher
about this and she said shes asked the same question at faculty meeting many times and no
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one has had an answer. When I receive my own teaching position I would start a PLC group
for assessment. And specifically ask for a project to look at creating rubrics and assessments
for orally administered quizzes.
In this unit we look at technology, particularly the use of cell phones. I tried to
incorporate the use of cell phones to create choreography and found that my activities did
not produce the results from students that I had planned for in my learning objective.
Students were supposed to use cell phones to direct dancers in their choreography and
performance in front of a group. Though the students had fun and tried something new the
objective was not reached and the most that came out of this exercise was a discussion on
how distracting cell phones can be. This led to a good civic discussion on appropriate cell
phone use but I had hoped that the technology could be implemented more to engage
students in higher order thinking. I will engage in more workshops that discuss and model
ways to effectively help students engage in the use of technology themselves in the dance
class room. I would love to take a workshop or attend a conference on 21st century skills.
Possibly the Instructional Leadership in the 21st Century Conference put on by the BYU
Public Schools Partnership (I could attend this to help with the aforementioned assessment
dilemma as well.) Or maybe I would find some ideas at the ScreenDance workshop at the
University of Utah in June with Simon Fildes.