Lesson Study Reflection

5
th
Grade

The lesson I taught our 5
th
graders was from the Engage New York website
Module 4, Lesson 3. The objective was interpreting a fraction as division. The lesson
from Engage New York has some fluency exercises at the beginning that I skipped due to
time constraints. I opened the lesson with an engaging activity that allowed students to
choose their own seat based on the number of brownies on the plate and the chairs
around the table. Both classes of 5
th
graders had students who immediately noticed the
table to sit to get the most brownies. Both classes also had some students who chose their
seat because they thought the table with the most brownies would give them the larger
amount. The table group of students who had 8 brownies to share with 4 people finished
their task of drawing and writing an equation fairly quickly. The second time I taught the
lesson I had them share another plate of a different amount of brownies that had them
splitting up whole amounts. I valued the conversations I heard the kids having about
different strategies as I walked around the room during the engage time. I observed
students who had an understanding of fractions, students who wanted to try to see if their
strategy worked, and students who were simply learning by watching the others come up
with a strategy, drawing, and equation.
When I started the explore part of the lesson, I remembered how the first class I
taught didnt use the post-it note paper to model the problem. They went straight to
drawing the problem, which was fine, except there were a few students who didnt know
what they should be drawing. For the second class, I modeled how you could use post-it
notes to model amounts and showed how you can cut them equally fairly easy because of
their square shape.
One thing I noticed better the second time around was how the students were
coming up with different strategies between them. They might have been coming up
with different strategies in the first class, but I really noticed it more with the second
class. Some students wanted to divide all the wholes first to make it easier to split into
groups, while others shared all the whole pieces and then divided up the remaining
pieces. I observed a few students back down and think they were wrong in their thinking
because their partner found a different strategy. I was more purposeful the second time
around to challenge students to come up with more than one strategy for the explore part
of the lesson.
In the explain part of the lesson, I kept the questions and the checking for
understanding flowing a lot faster the second time I taught the lesson. This made me a
little envious of single subject teachers who get to do some reflecting and revising of a
lesson almost daily. Based on their answers I either added more to the question or asked
another question to clarify. I felt the questions I was asking were just right for the level I
was teaching and trying to get out of them. I was purposeful in asking questions in all of
the quadrants of our Rigor and Relevance book.
I valued this experience of creating a lesson study and teaching it twice.
Although I was horrified to watch myself teach, I found it very informative and helpful in
so many ways. I was able to listen to the kinds of questions I was asking the students as
well as listen to the discourse going on in the class. My next steps will be to create lesson
studies that follow the format of engage, explore, explain, evaluate, and extend.