Reflections on Lessons Implementation Lesson #1

Instructional Decisions/Teaching

     There are a couple of things that went well in my lesson. These things consisted of student engagement, the use of the technology and the relationship between the students and I. The lesson was very hands-on towards the end even though the activities that we did were not originally planned out within my lesson. When the technology was working effectively the students were engaged and used the technology to further their learning. The last thing that went really well was the relationship between the students and I. Granted we have known each other for the last three semesters which helped make our relationship strong prior to the lesson. However, I am glad that the relationship I have with Caleigh and Lauren was strong enough to help me throughout my lesson when my lesson ended shorter than expected. The following things went wrong with my lesson: the technology did not work appropriately during certain parts of my lesson and that my lesson was rushed through because I could not time how long we took to get the technology to work. At the beginning of the lesson, the smart board needed to be restarted multiple times in order to get it to work correctly which took time out of my teaching. Once we got it to work the lesson went really well until we got to creating the artifact. It started to become obvious that the students could not write their calculations on their artifact. I decided to overcome this obstacle by having the students write down their calculations on a piece of lined paper which I would then scan into the computer at a later time. This lesson aligned almost perfectly to the objectives and standards that I had put in place. As previously mentioned, there were some modifications that were made to this lesson. Since I had problems with getting the smartboard to work at the beginning of the lesson, I cut myself short with the teaching portion of the lesson because I thought I had less time. This created a problem when my students were done with their artifacts which concluded the original lesson 15 minutes early. I had to come up with something else for the students to do. The students were given the task of measuring the area of real life objects (such as, the desks, the floor, the bulletin board outside) in which I assessed their ability to transfer the content from one context to another. The last modification made to this lesson was that instead of writing the calculations on to Pixie alongside their artifacts the students had to write it on a separate sheet of paper because Pixie won't let you write onto a math graph paper slide. Once I got to see the student's work, I realized that they could not complete the section of the assessment that asked them to write a multiplication fact so they were given the option to choose their own equation for how to calculate the total area. The last modification to the original lesson was that we decided to use Pixie instead of Kidspiration for the artifact because it was a software that we had used during the whole group lesson and the kids were more comfortable with it. 

Mechanics
     The technologies that I used during this lesson are the smartboard, Pixie, and personal computers. All of these technologies were used by both the teacher and the students in an engaging manner. The students and I took turns interacting with the smartboard and Pixie. The students were then asked to use their personal computers to create their artifact on Pixie to complete their independent projects. My lesson was too short because I rushed through the teaching in order to allow for enough time to complete the student's independent projects. Another reason that my lesson was short was because I underestimated the amount of time that we had left to get through the lesson after having problems with the smartboard.        

Assessment of Learning
     The following are examples of my students work for the final artifact. 

     Both of the students did very well on their artifacts. Caleigh was able to earn all of the points and master the objective and standards within her first try. The only thing that she failed to do is put the addition sign on her problem before adding the numbers down. Lauren had problems with adding her numbers together which threw off her answer by 10. She also forgot to put the addition sign on the problem and omitted to rechecking her work after she had completed the assignment. Both of my students were successful in achieving the expectations set by the objective and standards. I think that overall I was successful in teaching this lesson. The feedback that I received was excellent. The only thing that they suggested that I work on is time management. My peers would have liked to have seen me teach more on area before letting them work on their individual projects. Outside of these comments, I feel like I did really well on supporting their individual needs within this lesson. I hope to do better on my next lesson.