Reflection (5/19/16)

For my final observation this spring, I chose to do a lesson on

fractions, which the students began studying about six weeks prior to
the lesson. I created this lesson specifically to address student needs
for more practice with word problems (especially two and three step
problems), and with adding and subtracting fractions with like
denominators. I decided to give the students a story problem that they
had seen a week before because many students still needed more time
to understand the concept. In the beginning of the lesson, I told the
problem as a story and then we made a very simple chart on the
whiteboard about what we knew from the problem, and what we
needed to find out. Then, I gave the students a copy of the problem on
a piece of paper and released them to work on the problem
independently, after which they shared their work in pairs, and with
the group as a group share. Most of the students were familiar with the
format/organization of this lesson because the cooperating teacher had
used it in previous lessons. They also seem to enjoy learning together
and sharing their work as a group, so I incorporated group and partner
work.
Overall, the lesson went well, especially in terms of transitions,
pacing, and instructions. Students knew (and did) what they were
supposed to be doing at all times during the lesson with few
exceptions, and moved smoothly from one activity to the next. We
were also able to complete all components of the lesson and give a
proper amount of time to each component so that the activity was
meaningful to students. The students were also extremely engaged in
the content of the lesson. Although I initially asked students to do the
independent work silently, many of them were having productive
conversations about math, so I allowed them to continue.
Something that I would do differently for the future would be to
differentiate more. There was little differentiation in this lesson, but a
few students who were solid on the concept completed the work
quickly and seemed bored, so in the future I would provide more word
problems or an extension of the existing problem to work on during
class. Something else I would have done was add on to the class
discussion by asking the students to expound on the big idea of the
lessonwhat is this lesson really about? Sometimes we get stuck on
small things, which makes it more difficult to see the big picture/idea
and we need to come back to it to create a more solid understanding

of the concept. Finally, I would gather a small group of students to get

them started in the beginning of the independent work, because it
seemed like a few students did not know where to begin.