Sr.

Fides Nijimbere

EDUC 359

Spring 2018

Live Lesson Reflection

1. What was your objective(s) for the lesson? Do you feel like you achieved your

objective(s)? How do you know?

My objective was that the students would be able to explain the decision for

their chosen word, as described in a language objective area. On the other hand, my

content objectives were twofold. First, the students would be able to match synonyms/

antonyms to their base word. Second, the students would be able to identify

synonyms/antonyms for a given word. In this point, I achieved my objectives. For the

language objective, the student did explain the reason he chose one of the synonyms

which was the best for him among five written on sticky-notes.

2. The goal here was to challenge students’ vocabulary/language development.

Do you feel like you challenged them in this regard? How do you know?

I felt I challenged the student’s vocabulary/language development. The student

was asked to choose five synonyms and five antonyms for each key vocabulary word

namely good, bad, scared, and interesting. This last one was the hardest one for the

students. It requires to have a clue from the teacher to get the two last synonyms as

well as antonyms.

3. Was there a part of the lesson that you realized that was difficult and /or too

easy? Was there a part of the lesson that you felt didn’t work the way you meant

it too? What adjustments could you make if you were to do this again?
 A part of the lesson that was too easy was the part of “Presentation.” In this

part, it required to have a video that shows how words are related and can have

similar definitions or meanings. Because the meaning of synonyms and antonyms was

already known, it was easy for the students to follow the video and to internalize the

learning. However, the “Practice and Application” part of the lesson was not working

in the way I planned. If I was to do this again, I would ask the students to construct a

couple sentences that contain the synonyms or antonyms they have chosen. Or, I

would plan to ask the students to do a kind of scaling. That means to order the

synonyms from the weakest to the most powerful synonym. Also, the “Extension”

part was not worked well. The student was not given a written assignment as planned.

The adjustment would be to ask the student to write a paragraph with those different

synonyms and antonyms as well to improve their writing skills.

4. I realize that communication was not an issue since they are both English

speakers. If you were to repeat this lesson with an Ell student of the same age

(student has a basic understanding of the English language and lacks foundation

of content knowledge) what changes would have to make?

Of course, the communication was not an issue. If working with the ELL

students who have a basic understanding of the English language and lacks foundation

content knowledge, here are couple things I would do. First, instead of asking them to

write five synonyms and antonyms on sticky-notes, I would ask them only one. Then,

I would give the four other synonyms and four other antonyms because I assume they

do know much vocabulary. At this time, I would have to introduce the new

vocabulary, ask them to repeat after me, explain it with visual aids, and give the

example in the sentences. This would be followed by constructing their own sentence

with each new vocabulary as an ongoing assessment. Also, I would plan the reading
to expand the student’s knowledge with the new vocabulary word in order to improve

their reading skills.