Lesson Reflection. EDUC 352: Adolescent Exceptional Learners. October 5, Jesse Steffen

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1 Lesson Reflection EDUC 352: Adolescent Exceptional Learners October 5, 2010 Jesse Steffen

2 Steffen 1 I taught my lesson about quadratic equations to two Algebra II honors classes. It was the first lesson I have ever written and taught to a class all on my own. I was going to only teach it to one class like the requirements said, but I wanted to have two experiences that I could compare and contrast. I was excited, as well as a bit nervous to teach my lesson. Overall, I felt like it went really well, but there are a few thing I would like to change if I could do it over. In the first class, I taught there were 23 students, and in the second, there were 27 students. The only students that were of a different ethnic background from what I noticed were foreign exchange students. There were about three in each of the classes. These students were hard to interpret, because a few of them did not do very well on either of the tests I gave. I did not know if they did not do well because they were confused on how to do it, or if maybe I was talking too fast. Since this was an honors class, it was somewhat hard to differentiate between high ability learners and the exceptional learners. When I graded the tests, there were students that definitely stuck out with higher scores, but there was really no way I could tell who they were before the class. Steven Zemelman, Harvey Daniels, and Arthur Hyde say in Best Practices, Today s Standards for Teaching and Learning in America's Schools that one of the best practices in teaching math is to promote questioning and explanations (2005). This strategy was used, because I want students to ask questions very often and answer questions asked to them. This was done by asking after every step if there were any questions. I would also ask things that would refer to previous examples. For instance,

3 Steffen 2 when we were going over corresponding points, I asked the students where the vertex was. I thought this was the best strategy as well because some students are too scared to interrupt a lesson to ask a question. The first lesson I taught I was surprised the students did not get more into the activity at the beginning. I had a unique attention grabber, but when I asked if anyone wanted to come up to the board, no body wanted to. I was already crunched for time so I just did it myself rather than waiting. I thought there would at least be one outgoing person in the class that would be eager to get up and go to the board. I know when I was in high school there were people in every class that just liked the attention. The good news was I was able to adjust. I know it was not hard, but for my first time teaching, little things like that can throw a person off. One of the parts I wish I would have done more clearly was make the objectives as well as the standards known to the students by simply telling them or writing it down. The students somewhat knew what to expect by the pretest I gave them and the chapter title I wrote on the board, but I should have been more clear. One of the fears I had was to not have enough time to give my post test exam, and so I was in a bit of a hurry the whole time. If I had more time to relax and go through things I could have made the objectives more obvious. The first class I taught barely had enough time to get the test done with some who did not finish. Something that took some time but I did not want to take out was my attention grabber this was my favorite part of my lesson. I showed some videos of a snowboarder, a skateboarder, and a biker on a half-pipe. I also threw a tennis ball to a couple kids in the

4 Steffen 3 class and had them throw it back. The half-pipe itself and the path of the tennis ball were both examples of a parabola. This was a bit of a stretch for relating to the lesson, but I liked how it made the students think creatively. That was my only problem: it was a bit of a stretch. I told them I had two things to show them and they had to figure out how they related to math. This creative thinking I like to call brain teaser thinking is a good way to get their wheels turning at the beginning of class. After my attention grabber, I started with teaching them a few basic terms needed for the lesson. I then used scaffolding instruction to use those terms in the next example. My example taught the what the vertex was and the axis of symmetry. The next example I did was finding corresponding points. Well the first step in finding these points were to find the vertex axis of symmetry. These all built on themselves. The only thing wrong with this is that if a student did not understand the beginning of the lesson, it is hard to understand the rest. I tried to deter this by asking if anyone had any questions as I stated earlier. With the students asking questions, I tried to ask them questions as well. I would have liked to have a few students come up to the board and demonstrate some of the examples, but there just was not enough time. However, they did participate by answering the questions I asked. There were a few students that seemed to answer many of the questions, but there was not really a formal raise you hand type question and answer. I would ask a question and they would just say the answer if they knew it. There were some obvious ones that a lot of people would answer, then a few harder ones that only a few would answer. If I had to teach lessons everyday, I would try and mix it up

5 Steffen 4 between calling on students and having them just answer out loud. I know some students would never raise their hand but they would answer if they just had to say it. On the other hand, there are some that will only answer if they are called on. That is why I would like to mix it up from day to day. When asking them questions and writing my lesson, I found it hard to ask questions to get my students to think critically. I used my attention grabber as a way to get them to think outside the box, but it is more difficult to find those kinds of questions for a subject like math. The last example I did incorporated the most critical thinking in my lesson besides my opening. It was a long process to get the the answer, and you had to use some math tricks to get it. You had to think about which equation would be the best to use to eliminate variables. You could blindly go into the problem and eventually get the answer, but knowing the best way to go about it helps immensely. I was able to see how effective my lesson was by looking at the post-test. The first class was a much better representation of how I met the objectives in the fact that the scores were much better. The second class was not as obvious, but the scores still raised. I can not figure out why the first class did better; I was able to grade their tests and know what topics potentially needed emphasize for the second class. Because of this preparation, I thought the second class would have much higher scores. This may be due to the students I was teaching to and not how I was teaching. The first class was less involved but more focused. This could be why they did better. I would be able to use the data from the pretest and the post-test to figure out what I need to go over the next day. As I graded the post-tests, I found what the students were

6 Steffen 5 doing wrong and tried to give them notes to help them learn from their mistakes. This took a large amount of time and seems somewhat unrealistic in the classroom. After thinking about this on my way home, I decided that rather than seeing what each student did wrong, I would just quickly grade it and then go over it in class. That way they could see the correct way to do it and be able to ask questions. This would work with homework and quizzes, but on tests I would have to go through them and try to give as much credit as I could. I stayed at the school an extra hour and left the post-tests with my cooperating teacher, so the students could read my notes and hopefully learn from their mistakes. Teaching this lesson was a great experience. I was able to stand up in front of class and actually see the impact I had in one lesson. I could tell I was making connections with the students during the lesson, which made me excited to be with them more often. One of my goals was to give an attention grabber that was out of the ordinary and in turn, said a little bit of who I am as a person. I know I succeeded with this, because after my first class, I had a student come up to talk to me about snowboarding and the X games. It is small connections like that that will assist me build a relationship with students and help me help them. This experience has made me very excited to start teaching.

7 Steffen 6 Work Cited Zemelman, S. (2005). Best Practices, Today's Standards for Teaching and Learning in America's Schools. Retrieved from onlineresources/e00744/sample.pdf

8 Steffen 7 First class results Pretest Post-test Difference Average Pretest score Average Post score Diff in ave Test Average Test Score Test Scores Pretest Post-test Score Students

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Lesson will begin on Friday; Stations will begin on the following Wednesday

*Lesson will begin on Friday; Stations will begin on the following Wednesday* UDL Lesson Plan Template Instructor: Josh Karr Learning Domain: Algebra II/Geometry Grade: 10 th Lesson Objective/s: Students will learn to apply the concepts of transformations to an algebraic context