Welcome to the All Star Planning Podcast. My name is Kelsey, and this is the place where I talk all things, teacher lesson plans. Today I am talking about lesson reflection. What I mean by lesson reflection is really just the idea of reflecting on the things that you just taught. So there are a few reasons why this is important, but the primary reason is because you don’t want every single year of teaching to be exactly the same.
Is teaching the same every year?
And this is the question that I get asked a lot to by non-teachers in my life. They think that my job must be the same thing every single year. Every third day of school, for instance, I teach the metric system. But every single year is a tiny bit different.
And if you’re anything like me every single year, you are a little bit better, a little bit wiser. You’ve learned a lot over the last school year. So your teaching methods and the way that you deliver things and the activities that you do and the notes you deliver and everything that you do just gets teeny tiny upgrades as you go, right?
Assign time for lesson reflection
I think that when you have more of like a formal segmented part of your day or evening or week. Where you sit and you think about what you’ve done. I, that sounds like a punishment. “Sit here and think about what you’ve done.” It’s not supposed to be a punishment. It’s supposed to be a fun time. So. For my first year of teaching, I tried to do it every single day. I kept a journal. In fact, I found a really cute rainbow periodic table journal that I thought would like, incentivize me to write in it.
And it did for a while, but I realized that journaling wasn’t really my thing. But I would try to write in this journal once a day. In the beginning. I tried to write at the end of each class period, what went well and what needed improvement and what I was rocking the house on. And with the kids, where they were lacking, and where they were, where they were doing great. Because I wanted to get as much information as possible to help me kind of guide where I was going through the year.
Lesson Reflection and First Year Teaching
My first year teaching story is. I’m sure like many others. But I was the only chemistry teacher in the whole building. So I had no chemistry people to kind of teach me and walk me through things. And then New York state does a mentoring program. And although she was a fantastic, beautiful, you know, very smart, intelligent, and helpful woman, my mentor was the reading coach, the literacy coach. Not science. So she could help me with like some general education questions and some things regarding the school specifically.
But when it came to teaching science, had I asked her a question. It didn’t necessarily land the way that I wanted it to. So I didn’t have any science people really, to kind of go off of. There was a biology teacher and an earth science teacher. I don’t know about you, but as far as I’m concerned, biology and chemistry may as well be two different languages. I know the biochemist out there would disagree with me, but all the physical chemists out there will agree with me. Biology and chemistry are two entirely different languages. So I could talk to the biology teacher a little bit in like a science lens, but not in a chemistry ledge lens.
Lesson Reflection Journal
So it was all by myself there. And that is why I journaled like crazy. The journaling was really helpful, but it was only helpful in the short term. So I would, right after my first period class, the things that went well or the things that I wanted to change. And then I would immediately act on those with my next group of kids came in that very day. So as the day went on, my lesson got better and better because I took just two to three minutes to think about the things that went well. And the things that went not so well. And then I was able to make adjustments.
There are some adjustments that simply can’t be made on the fly, but there are plenty that can. So I made a note, these are the things I’m going to change for my next period class. And then some things that I wanted to change long term. Like next year when I teach this I want my note sheet to look different because I had already made the copies. You can’t go back, you know? Um, so there are some things that I would note like, “Hey, Kelsey, read this next year.” And there were some things that I would do in the first period class, I would hate them. I would switch them for the next class that came in.
Using the same lesson for different sections
It kinda got a little bit better. And then I would upgrade it again when the third class came in. Most days I was actually teaching five classes in a day. So it changed quite a bit from um, lesson to lesson. And then also in my third *first* year, I was teaching three different sections of chemistry. They were all different. One was hyper accelerated. One was project based. And then when was like your standard first year, chem. So, in my accelerated class, they did the whole course in one semester. It was like a whole whirlwind of craziness. I would take notes for that section and then apply those notes to my standard year one chem students. Just because they were learning the same content, but at different times.
So the lesson reflection really worked. But the journaling, I only held onto that for two months maybe. And then it just became too much to keep up with. And I recommend that you find a lesson reflection method that works for you, that you’ll stick with.
Printing and Editing Lesson Plans
So during that first year of teaching, I had been printing out all of my lesson plans and I kept them in a binder. And I was the teacher who was constantly reading that lesson plan, trying to figure out what I needed to do in the next minute. I’m not that teacher anymore, but I was for awhile. So I would write actually on my lesson plan, the things that I needed to change, the things that worked, the things that didn’t work, I started color coding. So I had a green pen of positive things and a pink thing that was like, “fix this” things. I don’t remember the colors, but there was color coding. There was writing, there was little notes. And that I think worked best for me because it was on the actual lesson plan.
Which meant that it was something that I was going to reference later in the day, not something that I wrote in a journal and then had to keep in my memory that I had written it, you know? So I really liked writing on the lesson plan, but then. With these three different sections. I had three different binders with three different sets of lesson plans, and then I would write. It became a lot. So what I started doing which is really the method that’s stuck. Uh, for a few years. Was just writing on post it notes. And then taking those posts and sticking them on the lesson plans, because if I wrote them in the wrong spots, I could just easily lift them and move them around.
Lesson Reflection inside and interactive notebook
Then what happened? During my second year of teaching, I started doing interactive notebooks. And I fell in love with them. It was kind of in a moment of desperation. The interactive notebook was born in my classroom. Um, but it has evolved. It went from really just like a modified textbook into more of an interactive notebook. And it’s evolving every year, but the reason it evolves every year is because I do lesson reflection. So once I decided in my second year that I really liked the idea of interactive notebooks. I kept moving forward with them.
So in year three, instead of the post-it method I moved on and just, I kept a teacher version of the interactive notebook. And I wrote inside the notebook, the things that needed to be changed for next year. And that’s my favorite lesson reflection method. So for me, it’s like, make sure to ask this question. Or the order of these lessons needs to be swapped or add this word and it’s definition to the notes. Different things here and there.
Being Very Critical In Lesson Reflection
Um, I find myself getting really, really, really nitpicky these days. And I think it’s just because I am very in tuned with critiquing myself. Does that sound crazy? Um, I don’t know. I I think we’ve decided that I’m some weird crossover between a Type A and Type B, but in terms of like my general personality, I would say I’m more Type A like, perfectionist. “I want to be the best” type of thing. And there’s a lot of ways that you can measure who is the best at any given thing. But I want to be the best Kelsey, who does chemistry interactive notebooks in my classroom. So I’m only competing with myself, but I just want to, I want to upgrade every year.
Using lesson reflection to improve teaching
So the interactive notebook is getting very, very, very nitpicky. But I like it that way, because for me, I want to be able to say that I did my best. I want to be able to say that I’m growing and evolving. It’s something that makes me proud of myself is that every single year I get a little bit better and every single year of teaching is not completely identical to the last one.
Because that would actually drive me crazy. I can’t, I can’t possibly operate with every third day of school being exactly the same. I know that every third day of school I’m going to teach the metric system. But the first year I did a reading comprehension and I hated it. So the second year I use the same reading comprehension, but I tweaked it and I added, um, practice problems in a different format. And I wasn’t a fan of that, and then the third year I did interactive notebooks and that was better, and then the fourth year I added in task cards.
I’m really enjoying this evolution. I think it makes my classroom more fun every single year. Um, especially in terms of the labs that I do. I started out as a pretty boring lab, mostly because I didn’t have any chemicals or any equipment, and now going into my fifth year as a chemistry teacher. Um, I mean last year was cut short. But we did the ice cream lab. Uh, the year prior we did the slime lab, which I’ve done every year, just because it’s very fun and very easy. But this upcoming year, I have a few ideas of labs that I want to add in. And what this does is that it just makes my job more exciting. Every single year, I find more fun and creative ways to teach stuff.
Chemistry is hard, so kids don’t LOVE it
And it just makes my life more fun. And I don’t know if you know this, but there’s only like 1% of people who actually enjoy chemistry. If you talk to anybody, any adult who has taken a chemistry class, there’s a 99% chance that they didn’t do well, they didn’t like it, they didn’t like their teacher, they didn’t enjoy it, it was the bane of their existence. There’s a lot of chem haters out there.
And I understand it because it’s a hard class. You are trying to imagine things in your brain that you can’t actually see. Like, we don’t know what atoms look like. They’re too tiny. But every single year, I make the concept of the atom a little bit more tangible and a little bit more exciting. And that just makes me excited because I like chemistry. Even in the boring sense. But making and evolving chemistry into something that’s more fun, takes out 1% of kids who like chemistry to a larger percentage.
Making Difficult Content Fun
And something that I love. I love, love, love, love, love. Um, I have kids who will tell me, “Mrs. Reavy, chemistry is the worst class ever, but I love coming to your classroom. I love coming to your class. It’s so much fun. I thought I hated science until I got to chemistry. And then I learned how fun it can be.” And like, I don’t care if they grow up to be chemists, but just the idea that they’re having a fun time. In a class that’s supposed to be boring. It makes me excited.
Um, and then when I’m excited, I’m having a fun time at my job. And honestly, it just makes my life more fun. I so much enjoy being a teacher. It is one of the best parts of my life is being a teacher and hanging out with 15 year olds and making slime and teaching about the models of the atom. And I don’t know, it’s just, it’s, it’s so fun to me. And I love when I can get a bunch of kids excited about science. Call me a science nerd. But I think that the best way to evolve your course into something that’s fun is really by reflecting on your lessons and making sure that the kids are actually learning what you want them to learn.
Because, uh, as much as having fun is fun. The first job is to teach them. And then the second job is to make it fun. So when you’re reflecting on the lessons that you can make sure that they’re actually learning the things that they’re supposed to learn, you’re delivering everything in the best way that you can. Which changes as you get better at being a teacher.
Using Old Lesson Plans as Benchmarks for Growth
Your best upgrades a little bit every single day and a lot every single year. I don’t know where you are in your teaching career, but, um, I look back at lessons that I had written as a first year teacher, a second year teacher. Even things that I wrote just last year and I look at them and go, “ugh, that was my best?” Which is such a weird feeling because you’re like, kind of, sort of, at least I am disgusted with what you thought was good.
But the only reason that that happens is because you’re growing and that is something that I’m actually proud of. Like, I look at something and I’m like, Oh, that’s terrible. I’ve gotten so much better since then. And I think it’s also partially just my excessively positive attitude. I tend to complain a lot, but on the whole I’m a very positive person. So, I don’t know. Just looking at my old stuff and thinking that what I could do now is so much better, to me is just proof that I’m doing something, right.
Lesson Reflection Makes Lesson Planning Quicker and Easier
So all of it comes down to lesson reflection, whether that is. Post it system writing on the lesson plans, keeping a journal, digitally writing on your plans, um, in the All Star Planning method, that’s what I teach. Although I do talk about the journal. Um, but if you have digital plans, just write them on the plans and then go back to them next year. So that next year your lessons are just tiny edits. Instead of trying to remember everything from 362 days ago. So if on September 15th, I taught significant figures and I didn’t write any lesson reflection. I didn’t take any notes about what I wanted to upgrade. On September 15th of the following year, I would have to backtrack in my memory, 360 something days. To figure out what I liked, what I didn’t like and what I want to change.
So if you take the lesson reflection notes in some way, your lesson planning is actually faster because you just have to make teeny tiny edits and you will already told yourself with those edits are so. Definitely consider reflecting on your lessons in some formal sense where you are either writing it or typing it. Post-its are probably not the best idea, honestly, because they come loose and disappear and whatever. But for me, they were in a binder. So they were kind of like squished between the pages. So they didn’t go very far. But whatever you decide, just make sure it works for you. And if you decide that it’s not working for you, switch it. There’s no reason that you need to stick with something that doesn’t work. That’s kind of silly.
All Star Planning Method
Okay. That’s everything on lesson reflection, please do it. It will change your life. It’ll change your lesson planning and it just makes your class more fun and exciting. And then every year is not the same. So, uh, if you haven’t already, please sign up for the All Star Planning Masterclass. It is a free masterclass. You can find it at plan.kelseyreavy.com. In the class I talk to you about how the five pieces of the All Star Planning method come together, make your life uh, your lesson planning, curriculum, writing life much easier with a system. And subscribe to the podcast so you don’t miss it. Episodes come out on Tuesdays and that is all. I’ll talk to you next week. Bye for now.
