Math Lesson Reflection ~ Quadrilaterals

This lesson is the second lesson after introducing polygons and quadrilaterals the day before. The students really enjoy working with hands-on activities when it comes to learning math. We worked on learning about quadrilaterals for a week, doing different hands-on activities each day. The first day, when I introduced the topic, I combined two lesson plans from the Envisions math book. The beneficial part of these lessons for the students is that it helps them to learn the vocabulary. After those lessons, we created an anchor chart which we eventually added more vocabulary during the rest of the week. For the rest of the week that we spent working on quadrilaterals, I found a great lesson plan online that bases the instruction and goals on the Common Core Curriculum. These lessons had many more hands-on activities for the students to learn from. Students had to cut out and sort shapes into different categories, solve riddles using their shapes, work in small groups to find more ways to sort, and the final outcome was a booklet they created with a quadrilateral riddle. They were able to share that riddle with many of their classmates and try to solve the other students riddle. I found that these lessons really benefited the students learning. I felt confid ent during the teaching of these lessons as well. I think that as time when on during my student teaching, I felt more and more confident that my students were learning. Once I began to plan my lessons using more hands-on activities, I found that students were more engaged and this helped get my classroom discipline on track as well.