Reflection Week of 2/27/17

This week, I completed the first full unit that I planned and taught in conceptual biology. There were some hiccups, though overall it went well. The biggest thing that I struggled with this unit was time management. I am having a difficult time knowing how long activities will take and making sure I leave time at the end of class to wrap up the lesson. In addition to this issue, after looking at the quiz grades from this Friday, I feel that I didn't appropriately prepare my students for this assessment. My students struggled a lot with applying concepts to new situations and reading comprehension of the test questions. Since the quiz questions came from the state-provided standardized test practice question bank, this raises a further worry that my students won't be prepared for their standardized test in May. I have been using similar questions from this question bank as my warm-ups each class, but I may need to re-evaluate how I approach these warm-ups. I plan to spend more time on walking students through strategies to read, comprehend, and analyze these questions.