Lesson Reflections

Part of my daily routine is to note how each of my lessons went.  Making this a routine was a battle for me, but I stuck with it all year long.  Completing lesson reflections gave me direction and focus on the changes I could make to my lessons over the summer.  I would write notes to myself such as, lesson took long, cut out_____, or had 5 minutes to spare, add _____, or change _____ notes to ______, etc.  I was able to make the necessary changes to my Geometry curriculum in about a week (back when I still had momentum and motivation at the beginning of summer).

Actually, I met with my principal early in July to discuss some things because I simply would not be able to relax this summer if they were still on my mind.  He told me I needed to take a break and to stop thinking about Geometry for a few weeks.  Instead of working on finishing the changes, I threw myself into creating new products for Teachers Pay Teachers, starting a YouTube channel, and improving my blog.  I have not gone back to making changes since.  As I write this, I have one last unit of Geometry to fix, and all of my General Geometry course to fix.  I think this will easily be done within a week because of the notes I have to guide me.

If I'm correct, I was inspired by similar work that misscalcul8 did.  (I know I got it from somewhere.)  I believe she even recommended completing the task in Google Sheets, which is what I did.  Last year, I used an Excel Spreadsheet, which was good, but Google Sheets worked out better for me.  As I'm teaching, I usually have an Internet browser open, and I could easily keep Google Sheets open and that would remind me to take notes throughout the day.  Even as I was delivering my lessons, I would start thinking about the changes I would need make to note of in my lesson reflection.

As teachers, we are constantly reflecting and making notes to ourselves about the things we want to change or improve.  I like this method of documenting those thoughts.

How I Set Up my Sheets:

• Every course I teach has its own sheet.
• The first row are all of the units for the course.  I widened the column for each unit.
• The first column is numbered for the different topics in the unit.  This numbering generally corresponds to how I save my files.
• I formatted each cell to keep the text in the upper left corner, and to wrap the text.

Once the sheets were set up, I was ready to start reflecting on my lessons.  I typed out the title of each topic in bold, and then started typing my reflection of the lesson.  If there was an additional day for the topic, I would write in bold "Day 2" and then type the reflection of the second day's activity.

Here is what my lesson reflections now look like:

At the end of the year, I read though everything I wrote and color-coded the text.  Anything I need to add is in pink, anything I need to remove is in purple, and anything I need to change is in green.  This has helped guide and focus me to knowing exactly what changes I need to make and where.  In short, it has been a game-changer in my summer back-to-school preparations. 

My goal for this up-coming school year is to remember to refer back to this document before I teach topics for the reminders and tips I wrote to myself.  And, of course, I will be making a whole new set of lesson reflections for the new school year.

How do you keep track of your lesson reflections?