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Artifact F: Reflective Planning and Instruction

Angela Tortora
Regent University

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Rationale
Reflective planning and instruction are important for a teacher to implement in their
decision making about lesson plans because reflection helps teachers become better at their jobs.
Upon reflection, teachers can write about what went well during a lesson, as well as what needed
improvement so that they can remember to tweak their lesson plans for the next years group of
students. Not only that, but reflecting when planning instruction is important because a teacher
must take the needs of various learners into consideration.
The two items I selected for this artifact are the pre-and-post-assessment I gave and the
results of both assessments. The assessments are exactly the same. I gave the students the preassessment in the morning before the lesson and the post-assessment after the lesson. The
assessments were about wants and needs. The students had six pictures, which were a candy
cane, shirt, food, television, house, and video game. The students had to decide which ones were
wants and which were needs. The students had to color the wants red and the needs green. I think
because this group is very low, they had a lot of trouble differentiating between wants and needs.
Even after the lesson, in which we reviewed the vocabulary, looked at pictures of wants and
needs, and talked about different things that are wants and needs, five of my students scored less
on the post-assessment. Based on this information, I plan to reteach needs and wants, but I will
only do them one at a time, rather than trying to teach both at the same time.
The other item I selected for this artifact is the scores from the pre- and post-assessments.
I recorded the scores in my notebook, but typed it into an Excel document. I had five students do
better on the pre-assessment, seven do better on the post-assessment, and five students do the
same on both assessments. I think the data is very interesting to see because I like being

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accessing prior knowledge in order to see how much the students know before teaching. I also
find it fascinating to see growth in my students after a lesson. Not only that, but the data is also
helpful for me because I can find out who needs more practice. Based on the results from these
assessments, I plan on re-teaching the whole group. After I teach one lesson as a whole group, I
will re-assess my students and if some seem to have mastered the content, I will break the
students into groups according to their levels from low to high.
I selected the pre- and post-assessments and the data from both assessments because I
believe they meet the criteria for this artifact. When I was making the lesson plan, I carefully
considered the needs of my students. I am in a Kindergarten classroom with seven students who
are English language learners. In order to help the ELL students associate words with objects, I
made sure to use pictures and point to the pictures when I said the words. I considered my visual,
auditory, and kinesthetic learners as well by using many pictures, adding emphasis and hand
gestures to certain words so that it might help them remember the words better. After instructing
the students, I thought about the things that worked well and the things that did not work well.
For instance, using visuals and hand gestures for certain vocabulary words are great in helping
the students remember. One thing I will do differently the next time I teach the lesson is
condensing the topic. Instead of teaching wants and needs together, I will teach them
individually.
When I am making decisions about my lesson plans, my first thought is to make the
activities fair for my students. I do not want to give them work that they cannot handle. I do my
best to think in the terms of a five or six year old and consider their attention span so that I plan
lessons and activities that they will be able to do. My faith impacts my practice in the classroom
because I think of Luke 6:31 (New International Version), which states, Treat others the same

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way you want them to treat you. I want to be treated with kindness and respect, which is the
same courtesy I extend to my students.
According to Morrison (2008), using assessments in the classroom are important for
many reasons, some of which include identify[ing] what children know identify[ing]
special needs determin[ing] appropriate placement... select[ing] appropriate curricula to meet
children's individual needs [and] refer[ing] children and, as appropriate, their families for
additional services to programs and agencies (p. 148). Children are diverse; they come to school
with a variety of needs. Teachers spend a significant portion of the day with these children and
form relationships with these kids. Based on the relationships they form with their students,
teachers assess how they can best help the children. Teachers can also use information acquired
from assessments in order to plan instruction. Based on the data a teacher records from
assessments, he or she can form groups according to high and low academic achievement.
Overall, assessments are incredibly important to the teacher because of the information he or she
receives from them.
The items I selected for this artifact connect to the student teaching standards because I
have had to evaluate and track pupil progress, diagnose teaching difficulties; implement changes
as necessary, evaluate personal and professional growth as a teacher, and demonstrate reflective
thinking and practice. For this artifact, I completed a pre- and post-assessment on my students
and recorded the data. Not only did I record the information, but I used that data to see how well
my students understood the lesson. Based on the lesson I did for the assessments, I reflected
upon how I could have done things differently in order to help the students come to a better
understanding of the topic, and have made a plan to re-teach the lesson. Because I take time to

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contemplate how my lessons went and what I could do to improve the next time, I believe it
helps me to become a better professional educator.

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Reflection
I selected this artifact because the items I used for it meet the criteria set forth in the
student teaching handbook. When I considered what to choose, I picked the pre- and postassessments that I gave the students and the results from the tests. It is my opinion that these best
showcase my work because I designed the assessments according to the SOLs and considered the
developmental level and cognitive abilities of my students.
The connection to the student teaching standards include the following: evaluating and
tracking of pupil progress, diagnosing teaching difficulties; implementing changes as necessary,
evaluating personal and professional growth as a teacher, and demonstrating reflective thinking
and practice. As a professional educator, one of my responsibilities is to track and evaluate
student progress. For this artifact, I created a pre- and post-assessment in order to activate my
students prior knowledge and evaluate them after I taught a lesson. After teaching the lesson, I
contemplated what went well and what I could do differently the next time I teach this lesson.
The artifact demonstrates my understanding of the program outcomes because I was able
to create a pre- and post-assessment that is aligned to the Standards of Learning, as well as to
tailor it the developmental and cognitive abilities of my students. After taking the papers back, I
was able to record the results and peruse the data. Based on the data I received from these
assessments, I am able to see which areas the students need to improve on. Since many of them
struggled with the concept of a want versus a need, I learned that I need to re-teach the lesson.
Instead of combining wants and needs, I will focus on one aspect at a time. For a week, I will
talk about needs only and for another week, I will focus on wants. Because I set aside time to
journal about each day in school, I am able to use that time to contemplate about the things that

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worked well during the day and about the things I could do to improve as a professional
educator. Education is a field in which the professional needs to continually grow; careful
reflection upon practice and planning will go a long way in helping the professional educator
continue to develop.

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References
Morrison, G. S. (2008). Fundamentals of Early Childhood Education. San Francisco, CA:
Merrill, Pearson Education Inc.

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Name_____________________________________

Wants and Needs

Color the wants red.
Color the needs green.