For my ED 350: Teaching and Learning course this semester, I had the privilege to design and teach 3 lessons to 4th graders in Miss Formaggioni’s class at Expeditionary Learning Academy at Moylan School (ELAMS) in Hartford, CT.
My three mathematics lessons were:
Prior to beginning ED 350, I had experience teaching students in a classroom. I was primarily focused on reading since this past summer I was a teacher for a reading enrichment program here in Hartford. Even though I had this experience, I had never made a lesson plan of my own and taught it. I was also focused on creating math workshops for Miss Formaggioni as she had told me that her class didn’t really focus on science and she wanted me to create workshops that would help her students with math topics they were struggling with. This was certainly a first for me and I am very thankful to have had the experience because I have learned so much this semester and believe that it will help me in the future as an educator.
Three main things that I have learned and improved upon this semester were…
Getting Comfortable Teaching and Explaining/Speaking to Students
I was a bit nervous during my first workshop because it was my first time teaching a workshop I have created to 4th-grade students. As time went by and I taught my other two workshops, I learned how to better engage with students and was more confident in explaining things. Explaining things also got better because I made my lesson plans less complex and easier to follow. When walking around the classroom while students were doing their work, I got better at explaining and guiding them by repeating the guiding question and helping them think about how to solve problems by asking them guiding questions that would get them to the answer. During my last workshop, some students were confused about how to show me their thinking. I reminded them that we went over “how to share” as a class and that long division was simply equally dividing. I explained that DMSBR were steps to get your answer but that the sharing example showed us how each step works. I remember explaining to a group of students that when we divided the “money” amongst friends, that was the same as dividing when doing DMSBR. When we brought numbers down, that was the same thing as changing a $100 to 10 $10 bills or 1 $10 bill into 10 $1 bills. I also got way better at asking students for their attention and redirecting them to doing the activities.
Making Lesson Plans
I’ve had experience with “making” lesson plans prior to this class. The lesson plans I was familiar with came from a big curriculum book that already had the lesson plans made but I was able to pick and choose which activities to do from a list. For this class, however, I had to create them and teach them. This was quite the experience for me.
Making lesson plans for math was a bit challenging for me but I was able to overcome it with the help of Professor Jack Dougherty. One experience, in particular, was for my last workshop, Long Division Mission. I had trouble when creating this lesson plan because when I was younger, I remember learning how to do long division in fifth grade, writing notes on all the steps, and simply just memorizing the steps to solve the equations. I never learned why or how it works in my class and never really thought about it until I had to create the workshop which is kind of shocking to me. With my professor’s help, I was able to create an engaging lesson plan that not only provided students with a way to remember the steps but also, to think about how long division works and why the steps in Long Division work. Using Howie Hua’s sharing method definitely helped students understand and visualize how it works.
I also incorporated ideas from the book Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics by Peter Liljedahl into my lesson plans which made learning more effective and engaging. Some of these ideas were having students work in groups instead of individually in order to provide students with a space where they are able to share ideas and learn from one another. Another idea from the book was creating hands-on activities such as having students make their own questions for Minecraft Multiplication and having students visualize fractions with Fraction Bars (Equivalent Fractions) where students are able to be creative instead of having students simply do a worksheet where they have to solve math problems.
Student Assessment
I also used ideas from the book Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics by Peter Liljedahl, to plan how I was going to assess students. I used the actual activity itself and Exit Slips to determine student learning. For my first lesson, I was planning on assessing students by going off on their posters for the Minecraft Multiplication. Although this was the plan, I forgot to collect them which led to me having to access them based on memory. After this lesson, I always remembered to collect all materials, even if there was a chance I wouldn’t have to use them. For my second workshop, Equivalent Fractions, I planned on accessing students based on their Opening Activity Slips, worksheets, and Exit Slips. Students demonstrated higher level thinking and learning because it was obvious that many of them struggled during the Opening Activity but once they were able to visualize fractions using the Fraction Bars I made for them, there was visible improvement and learning from the worksheets I collected and the Exit Slip. Students were able to show me why fractions are equivalent by the end of the lesson. For my third lesson, Long Division Mission, most students were gone by the end of class due to a field trip and I also ran out of time so I was not able to distribute the Exit Slip I was originally going to use to access students. Even though this was the case, I was still able to show that students learned throughout the lesson with the activity! Students were able to show me how and why Long Division works by drawing pictures that show how numbers are divided.
Overall, I have grown so much as an educator. I have learned how to make lesson plans that aren’t too complex for students to understand yet, still enable higher-level thinking and learning, I have gotten more comfortable guiding students and asking questions that make students question the topic at hand, and have learned how to create lesson plans that have overall, helped students with topics they were struggling with by having them look at the topic from a different perspective. I look forward to seeing how this experience will help me in the future!