Demo Lesson 1

Intern: Taylor Yao

Observer(s): Dr. Pamela Mason & Ms. Abigail Frost

Grade Level: Grade 4

Date of Observation: 22 October 2025

Intern’s Identified Problem of Practice:

According to the learner K.’s assessment results, his spelling and writing skills are considerably weaker than his reading, listening, and speaking abilities. Therefore, the interventionist began the intervention by focusing on writing. The instructional objectives included helping the learner develop the ability to construct strong sentences, paragraphs, and essays independently; transfer his verbal vocabulary into written form; and enhance his motivation to write informational and opinion essays, which are key components of his ELA curriculum.

Feedback on Intern’s Identified Problem of Practice:

• Strengths

• A good connection between the interventionist and the learner;

• The learner was very comfortable sharing with the interventionist about what he knew and what he was unsure about;

• Full preparation for the intervention session;

• The Interventionist carefully prepared his teaching plan, teaching materials, learning toolkits, and lesson script;

• The learning toolkits created by the interventionist activate the learner effectively;

• Precise time management;

• The Interventionist planed his lesson with exact time length for each section and followed his plan well during the lesson.

• Challenges

• Prioritizing one or two teaching materials in order to make the lesson focus outstanding;

• Too many teaching matericals might blur the focus of the lesson;

• Not enough attention to culturally sustaining pedagogy;

• For example, the interventionist compared a paragraph to a burger, but the learner did not even eat burger in his daily life;

• Duadually reducing scaffolding and encourage independency form the learner;

• The lesson was highly scaffolded, which is reasonable for the first intervention session but should be guradually adjusted in the following sessions.

Intern’s Reflection on the lesson and the feedback (including how the feedback will be implemented):

The intervention session today was satisfactory and contributed positively to my sense of self-efficacy as both an interventionist and a learner in this course and practicum. Although I am pleased with the overall effectiveness of today’s session, I recognize that there are still several areas for growth and improvement in future sessions.

There were several notable strengths in my first writing intervention session. First, I successfully established a strong rapport with my learner, which allowed him to feel comfortable and engaged even in the presence of observers—my professor from Harvard and my literacy coach from Cambridgeport. Second, I demonstrated thorough preparation for this session. For instance, I used the laser cutter in the Education Innovation Lab (Maker Space) at HGSE to create personalized “face tags” for my learner, based on the faces he had drawn during the previous assessment session, which served as effective learning tools that enhanced engagement and supported the intervention process. Finally, I managed the session time efficiently, making full use of the limited 30 minutes and maintaining steady control of the lesson flow according to plan.

On the other hand, there remains considerable room for improvement in my future sessions. One noticeable area of weakness in today’s lesson was that I incorporated too many teaching materials into a single session. The excessive use of materials required frequent transitions, which may have distracted the learner and hindered his ability to grasp the main focus of the lesson. Another area for growth involves my limited attention to culturally sustaining pedagogy, which led to a few awkward moments during instruction. In addition, although it is appropriate for the initial intervention sessions to include a high level of scaffolding, I should gradually encourage greater learner independence and provide opportunities for him to take more initiative in his writing.

In conclusion, today’s intervention marked a strong beginning to the overall intervention process; however, I still need to continue improving my lesson planning, content design, and scaffolding strategies to better support my learner’s development in future sessions.