Middle School Math - Lesson Plans
Action PlanThis is the action plan for my observation made by Dave Coffey on 11/2/2012. It details what I wanted Dave to observe about my lesson - in this case it was in regards to engaging students in discussions. Discussing content as a class is a very useful way to see where the students are in their understanding of the material. It allows them to openly talk about the concepts we are addressing. The freedom of open discussion puts students at ease and makes them more likely to challenge what they learned, think about it in different ways, and provide more supporting evidence. In my lesson, students talked about triangle properties and then debated which triangle was the best. The intentions are listed in the action plan below. Following my action plan I provided Dave's observations on my lesson.
Unit PlanningAn example of a unit plan I created is in the file provided below. This unit is based on Geometry. The unit begins through exploration and discovery of shapes, their properties, and their areas/perimeters. Students began by working in a computer lab with Geometer's Sketchpad to develop the properties of quadrilaterals. Later, students used these properties to develop a hierarchy of quadrilaterals. The unit progresses into triangles, five to ten sided shapes, and leads into the next unit working with circles. The unit was planned with my co-teacher assistant and includes the objectives to be learned, how assessments will be used to gauge student progress, the Common Core Standards, and what days each topic will be taught on.
Unit Plan
The unit plan for polygons including their names, properties, areas, and perimeters is provided below.
Learning ObjectivesCommon Core Standards:1. Draw, construct, and describe geometrical figures and describe the relationships between them.
a. Solve problems involving scale drawings of geometric figures, including computing actual lengths and areas from a scale drawing and reproducing a scale drawing at a different scale. b. Draw (freehand, with ruler and protractor, using technology) geometric shapes with given conditions. Focus on constructing triangles from three measures of angles or sides, noticing when the conditions determine a unique triangle, more than one triangle, or no triangle. c. Describe the two-dimensional figures that result from slicing three-dimensional figures, as in plane sections of right rectangular prisms and right rectangular pyramids. 2. Solve real-life and mathematical problems involving angle measure, area, surface area, and volume. a. Know the formulas for the area and circumference of a circle and use them to solve problems; give an informal derivation of the relationship between the circumference and area of a circle.
Reflection on Tricky Triangles/Debate Lesson Plan
I think that the lesson went really well. Students seem to thrive in an interactive lesson and were readily participating in activities and discussions. At the start of the lesson, students were asked to arrange themselves into table groups based on the triangle they were given. In each group there was a name, two properties, and one picture. Students were excited to show their classmates the triangles and properties on the board, but some were very hesitant to give the presentation. I found it useful to give the ones that were nervous about presenting a very small part of the presentation to put them at ease. Others took total control of the group and needed to be limited in the amount they presented. Having students come up and play rock paper scissors with another group leader added new stimuli while the presenting group wrote up their answers. It got the students excited and focused.
After tabulating our triangle names, definitions, and pictures, the class divided into three groups depending on their slip of paper’s color. It switched up who was working together and got a big group to collaborate on the next activity, a useful skill in and outside of the classroom. Once divided into their group, each was assigned a triangle and was asked to determine why their triangle was “the best.” In the future, I would be clearer in what the group is aiming to accomplish. For example, I could relate it to the hunger games and ask why that triangle would make the best arrow head for Katniss to use in the games. During the debate, students became very passionate in defending their triangles. It was really cool to see the enthusiasm and the debate continued until the end of the period. At that point, I had to cut the discussion off and when students asked if we could continue, I told them they were more than welcome to talk with each other outside of math class. Later that day, I heard a few of them still debating in the hall. It made me smile to see that they were still passionate about their triangle and that a mathematical conversation could be continued on their own. Next time, I really want to hand more of the responsibility over to the class by allowing them to create the guided questions I gave them at the beginning of the debate. In slowly releasing the control, I will be able to teach the students how to lead a discussion, defend their view, and correct public speaking techniques. I did not clearly outline how a debate is structured before beginning the discussion last time. Thus, next time we debate I plan on explaining the layout of the debate at the beginning to set the expectations of the students for that hour. In the future I plan to have a debate lay-out sheet for each student to read through and review the process. This will include things such as how long they have to make their opening statement, how to make their claims during their speaking time, what to do for the rebuttal, and then concluding remarks. I will emphasize which parts we will touch on that day based on the amount of time left for the debate. For example, in the last class we only had time to make the claims so I would mention that although it was not going to be a complete debate, they were still partaking in a good amount of it. This reference note card would be laminated and saved for future debates so the expectations of the debate remain constant. I did notice that the groups were organized in an interesting mix of learners. One group had a very strong group of learners, another was mixed, and the last had a group that really struggled with the concepts. Additionally, personalities were not distributed well. One group contained reserved students, another louder, confident students, and the last a group of students who did not care about the topic or achievement. In the future I plan to group students more intentionally when they come into the classroom. This will help the conversation become more effective. Overall, the activity allowed my energetic class a chance to move, speak their opinions, and gather helpful information. The variety of activities kept the class focused and interested in the task. The debate led to a really good discussion and the students were very excited to talk about math. In the future, I plan to lead debates in a way that facilitates more student-driven instruction, provides a solid layout of what it looks like to have a debate, and allows all students a chance to voice their view. Using debates as a way to generate properties is very effective and continuing this lesson technique will help the students become better public speakers and mathematicians. |
Lesson PlanningLesson plans are important in order to teach effectively. They must be thorough enough to include the standards being evaluated, ways to reach these standards, teaching for students of all levels and abilities, and tools and techniques that can be useful for that particular topic. Thinking through all these aspects of the lesson before it is taught helps the instructional period go smoothly and effectively.
Interdisciplinary Unit
Below is a lesson plan I used for my Geometry unit and one for an interdisciplinary unit I created representing with The Great Depression unemployment rates using graphical representations.
Using Technology (Geometer's Sketchpad)Below is the lesson plan for an activity involving quadrilaterals. It is an exploratory activity that uses Geometer's Sketchpad to allow students to explore various quadrilaterals and their properties. In the end they will realize which shapes contain each property and how that impacts what other shapes they can create.
Planning Quadrilateral Quandary
Planning this lesson took a good amount of thought and consideration. The objectives of the lesson correlated directly to the standards and were my main focus as I planned my lesson. As I began thinking of ideas for how to relate these quadrilaterals I first considered all of the objectives that I wanted my students to understand at the conclusion of the unit. Next, I decided on a way to keep the students engaged in the material and that was when I came across Geometer's Sketchpad. This software allowed me to create each type of quadrilateral that could perform different changes to the actual shape while still retaining its properties. It opened my eyes to letting the student use this software as an exploration tool and a way to really analyze and understand the similarities and differences between the different quadrilaterals.
To make the activity even more enjoyable to the students I added a mystery element to it. Students were given a scenario at the start of the class that indicated there was a murder and they had to determine which shape had done it. The activities consisted of shapes in various "rooms" on Geometer's Sketchpad which could be manipulated in order to determine the shape's true identity. Before the lesson began I was aware that students would struggle with using the computer and the software in general since they had not used Geometer's Sketchpad yet. In order to prevent this from occurring I created a step-by-step process of what the student should do once they had logged onto their computer, where to go to get the file, and what to do once the file was opened. Since they were in the computer lab, I knew students were bound to struggle staying motivated on the lesson since it was an entire hour of exploration and some students require a lot of guidance in order to remain on-task. To avoid this from happening, I decided to give them updates as to where they should be on their worksheet at that time indicating things such as, "by now you should all have at least three shapes mastered," or "you should have all analyzed the shapes that keep side lengths together and those that do not at this point." This provides students with a goal they should be reaching and gives them motivation to continue working hard. Since some students are faster workers, I also made some extensions to the lesson to keep these students focused and learning. Students that finished had other explorations to complete on Geometer's Sketchpad and were encouraged to continue their enthusiasm and discovery. All of these plans helped to make this a very successful lesson and planning ahead avoided a lot of issues from arising later. Common Core Standards for Mathematical Practice
1. Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them.
2. Reason abstractly and quantitatively. 3. Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of other. 4. Model with mathematics. 5. Use appropriate tools strategically. 6. Attend to precision. 7. Look for and make use of structure. 8. Look for and express regularity in repeated reasoning. Observations made by Professor |