Mini Lesson

Number of students: 5 Date: 10/30 Topic: Subtracting three digit numbers

1. The planned activity or lesson: The lesson planned was what the teacher had created for
the subject the mini lesson I did was using the base ten blocks to help the struggling
students with subtracting the three digit numbers.
2. Learning strategies used: I used demonstration of the subtraction through the base ten
blocks to help students that were struggling with using the algorithm.
3. Assessment strategies: I demonstrated the first two then questioned them what to do and
how to solve the problems.
Reflection of Mini Lesson
1. What did you do well in the mini lesson? The teachers lesson had them working in
workbooks solving a couple pages of subtraction problems through the algorithm. Some
of the students were really struggling so I thought I would try showing them with the base
ten blocks. I thought it was working well. They were able to find the answers using the
blocks to set up the first number then subtracting the next one. After a couple of
examples they seemed to understand the borrowing. One of the students even said oh
now I get it. It made me feel like I was doing something right. I only had about 15
minutes to work with them. By the end they understood why they had to borrow, that
they could not just reverse the numbers, but they were not able to transfer that knowledge
to the algorithm.
2. What would you do differently if you were to teach this mini-lesson again? For one I
didnt like the teacher had been teaching adding three digits for the past week and a half
and then she expected them with a substitute to learn the subtraction process, which is
just as hard, on their own. Thats why I took kids that were struggling most with it and
worked with them. I think the lesson would have turned out really well if I could have
continued with it. They were able to work with the blocks to show me the process but
writing it on paper was confusing them.
3. Comment on the overall effectiveness of the lesson. The mini-lesson was working well.
They had finally understood that you could not just change the numbers (example 360-
257 trying to switch the 7 and the 0 to say that 7-0=7 which was not correct). They
seemed like they were beginning to understand borrowing they only thing needed was to
transfer the representation of base tens to paper. I think if we had worked more with
transferring the representation on paper they would have also began to understand the
algorithm process that the teacher wanted them to know.