Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Taught first lesson yesterday

It was my turn at the lab school to teach a lesson. My partner and I were assigned "percent equation". It was nice to have a partner to help with this. He forwarded me a power point, I adjusted it to my style and I forwarded him the written lesson plan based on my changes. We each taught one period by ourselves. I was lucky to get 2nd period, the rowdy group of kids.
I set up my computer and tested the smart board to make sure everything was working. When the students came in I had them working on a warm up. After the warm up I pulled out the class rules and reminded them that I expected them to follow all the class rules that were set in place when the lead teacher was teaching. Then off I went. I love the smart board - when it works. I should have used the lead teachers computer because a few slides in something went crazy. Every time I would use the markers on the smart board the text from my slide would disappear. So I had to copy all the problems on the whiteboard to work them out. Not that big of a deal but not what I wanted.
Once I went over a few problems with the students I had them take out their personal whiteboards to do some practice. I set up rules and went over them before we started a one minute free write on them (to get it out of their system). When we got into actually using the whiteboards for problems I set a time limit to keep them focused.
At any rate....
I would say my classroom management was amazing, not one kid misbehaved.
What worked:
The use of a kitchen timer to set a sense of urgency and keep the kids on task.
Going over the ways a % can be written.
Relating the word "Part" to is and "Whole" to of.
Telling the students what exactly to copy into their notes.
Having students box the question and under line the key facts in word problems. This made it easier to put their answer into a sentence.
What did not work:
The smart board - but that was a technical issue.
Showing the students how the previous equation turned into the new equation - this just confused them even more.
My time management. I barely made it through my lesson and did not have enough time for class work to really see who understood what we went over.
Using the seating chart to try to call on students. That chart confused the hell out of me for some reason. 
What I would do different:
Spend less time going over examples together. I think they got the idea after the first two.
Set clear steps for them to follow to get the answer to the problem.
1. Box the question and under line the key facts
2. Find the Percent, Part, Whole
3. Change the percent to a decimal
4. Plug into the formula
5. Solve
    a. multiply
    b. isolate variable
6. If percent is the answer change from a decimal to a percent
7. Write your answer in a sentence.
My questions:
How do I help that one student who did nothing in class. I told him to at least write the question down if he did not know how to do it and to make sure to copy all the notes but he still did not even do that for the most part. I even asked the person sitting next to him to help him out with one of the problems. I don't have any specifics on him as in if he is EL or has and IEP, yes I should have those but I only attend the lab school every other day and was not their when this was gone over with everybody.....


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