The Classroom Environment
I conducted a lesson on ordered pairs to my 5th grade class. It was a new concept, so I planned my lesson very carefully (FEAPs 1b & 1c). I wanted my students to grasp the concept by the end of the lesson, even though I had allotted myself two days to teach the lesson. While I taught the lesson, I noticed it felt very slow-paced lesson. I thought the students were bored and that I was repeating myself often. After I watched my video however, I noticed that even thought the lesson was slow paced, it was very effective. I decided when I taught my lesson to my second group of students, I would not change the pace, and I am happy I did not. Even though some students thought it was easy, others struggled to plot the ordered pairs correctly. I did not teach the follow up lesson the next day because when I checked the homework I had assigned, most of the students had understood the concept and completed the extra work I gave them for extra credit (FEAP 3d). It did not surprise me that my students grasped the lesson so well and so quickly, but it did surprise me to watch myself so comfortable while I taught. I feel like my teaching style has become more consistent and natural.
Analysis
After watching my video, I realized the best thing I did when introducing the new content was to teach it slowly and use repetition. I repeated key vocabulary terms many times throughout my lesson. I was able to use the vocabulary to show my students how to correctly identify and plot ordered pairs and it was an effective way to keep the content ingrained in their minds while introducing new math terms. There were only a few students who returned the next day with their ordered pairs plotted backwards and those students were the ones I noticed were not paying attention to the lesson. I was very pleased with the outcome of this lesson. I felt that even though some students could have learned it in much less time, it was beneficial to the entire class to teach it the way I did (FEAP 2f). I feel as though there are some lessons that I have taught in the past that would have been better if I had reduced the pace a bit, like I did for this one. In the future, I feel like I should always plan for the maximum teaching time to reach all my students and then adjust the lesson planning from there. Since there were only a handful of students (4) who did not complete their homework correctly, I was able to pull a small group very quickly and re-teach the portion of the lesson that they misunderstood.
I really enjoyed watching this lesson. I felt very comfortable teaching and I could tell my students felt comfortable with me as well. I knew as soon as I started watching my video that I really love to teach!
ct_observation_cycle_1.docx |
video_reflection_ct_cycle_1.docx |