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How to Keep a Reflective Journal After Teaching a Lesson on Fluency

Keeping a teacher journal after a lesson on fluency can be a great way to objectively determine if the lesson went well overall. Listing the weaknesses of the lesson, the strengths, your favorite part of the lesson and your least favorite part are all great aspects to comment on in your reflective journal. It could also be beneficial to ask the students what they liked and disliked about the lesson along with what they learned. It is not always ideal to open yourself up to criticism. Self review can be a useful tool either as a whole class discussion or individual surveys by the students.

Instructions

    • 1

      Ask students questions either verbally as a whole class or with individual surveys their thoughts on the fluency lesson. What did they learn? What did they like about the lesson? What did they dislike? Do they feel that their fluency improved? Jot down their answers in your journal while they are responding or when you review their responses.

    • 2

      Reflect on the student responses immediately. What surprised you about their responses to the fluency lesson? What did you learn from their responses? Write down your reaction without censoring yourself.

    • 3

      Ask yourself what were the strengths and weaknesses of the fluency lesson overall after responding to the student input. Elaborate why you feel something was a strength and why something was a weakness. Jot down ideas for how to improve these weaknesses. If you did a group lesson, you might come up with ideas about how to group students differently next time. This is helpful especially if it did not go well because students kept talking about other things instead of paying attention to improving their fluency.

    • 4

      Write down what was your favorite and least favorite part of the lesson. These responses should differ from the strengths and weaknesses because they should be very specific examples of great and not-so-great moments during the lesson. For example, perhaps a student finally said a word perfectly that she had been having trouble mastering. This moment would not be a strength of the lesson necessarily but would count as possibly your favorite moment.

    • 5

      Finish your reflection with two ways to improve the next fluency lesson. Can you try a more difficult book because the students seemed a little bored with the reading material? Can you show a clip from "The King's Speech" to help students see the importance of clear, annunciated speaking and reading? Wrap up the journal with these types of ideas that are tangible and can be easily implemented.

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