Lesson+Plan+4+Reflection

This lesson was a very unique one. The entire drive of the lesson was a student centered learning environment to have the students derive formulas and relations on their own through a guided activity. The concept of the lesson seemed to be exactly what the focus of the education department is driving at and the development of the lesson was perfect for the students in the class that I was teaching the information to. The outcome of the lesson was less than stellar. The students hated every minute of the class and many actually came up to me to express concern that I did not teach them anything. The focus of the students is to be spoon fed everything that they need to know so that they can memorize it and then not have to worry about where it comes from. As the students worked through the exercises that I had developed they fought the ideas of developing their own formulas and relations. I had thought that they would jump at the opportunity to have the control over their own learning and to be able to discover the information that they would need. The activity that was developed was a very tactile and visually interactive medium, but several of the students came up to me to express concern that they were either a visual learner or needed a hands-on activity and that the day’s lesson was of no use to them. They told me that the times that a teacher stands up and gives them the information and has them do exercises are more meaningful to them than what we did today. It was very frustrating. The worksheet that was developed did have a few small things in it that were easy to correct. The second exercise was intended to have the students find a relation between //a, b,// and //c// and the //x// value of the vertex. To resolve this problem I simply walked around to each student and told him or her of the correction. Another problem tat arose that I had not anticipated was that the students were unable to formulate their observations into a meaningful expression mathematically. They could explain what they were saying in words but they could not put it into a formulaic expression. Due to this hang up on the second exercise many of the students were not able to finish the activity during the class time. His will put them at a disadvantage when it comes to the homework for the week. The computer simulation that I found was designed perfectly for the subject of finding the vertex and properties of the different parts of the quadratic functions. Once the students realized that I would only guide them and not give them the answers they began to work together and many were able to finish through a cooperative effort. This lesson was for the first period of a Monday morning. During this period the school has its weekly announcements causing the useable class time to be truncated. From this shorter time frame and from the travel to the computer lab to use the simulations not all of the students were able to finish. From this perspective the goals of the lesson were not accomplished. In the future I will be certain to do lessons such as this one on days when a full class time is given to the students. The idea for this lesson came while I was preparing over the weekend. As a result of this I was uncertain if I would have access to the computer lab for the class that I needed. To compensate for this I prepared lessons for both classroom discussion and computer simulation. This diversity of lesson option might make it difficult for another teacher to pick up this lesson and know what to do with it. The options do make the lesson more useful, but they also limit the understanding of someone grabbing them for the first time and teaching them off the cuff. Also, the student centered nature of the lesson is normally much more involved than a stand and preach approach. The biggest problem that came up with classroom management was based on the fact that these students wanted everything handed to them, not requiring them to think about the information for themselves in the slightest. If they had been more willing to play with the simulation and try things for themselves then they would have been much better behaved. The lesson as a whole could have used more explanation about expectations, but in all it went well. The students just need to realize that they can find things on their own and have the learning still be meaningful.


 * The evaluation of my Master Teacher can be found at this link: [|Lesson 4 Evaluation.pdf].