Reflective Essay On Videotape

The lesson I chose to videotape was a two day writing lesson I taught the second grade students. The focus of this writing lesson was for students to be able identify the overall problem in a reading and find strong evidence that shows how the problem was solved. Then once that strong evidence was found, the students needed to write a written paragraph that answered how the problem was solved. I began teaching this lesson on Tuesday, March 22nd, and began videotaping the last portion of the lesson on March 23rd. This was because on March 22nd, the students were doing more reading and group work, whereas on Wednesday I was discussing with them and explaining how to respond to our questions of, how did the engineers and scientists solve the problem with the Leaning Tower of Pisa? Then, the students went through the process of outlining their paragraph with an organizer I provided, and writing their final copy on the other side.
As I watched the video of myself teaching, it was hard not to cringe; mainly because I don’t like watching myself on camera and I saw certain aspects of my teaching that I need to work on. The students were all gathered on the carpet, and most of …show more content…
Allowing myself to be my own worst critic and identifying the aspects of my teaching that I need to work on and strengthen, is extremely important to my development as a new teacher. This will help me with my edTPA in the Fall in many ways. Mainly because I now know where I need to improve in order to better myself as a teacher. Also, when I film myself in the Fall, I can look back and see if I reached my goal of improving in certain areas. Then, I will be able to pinpoint the other areas I need to focus on and still work on strengthening every other aspect of my teaching. It is never fun watching yourself teach and being your own worst critic, but it has proven to be very helpful and imperative in my development as a