Doering 1

Jennifer Doering
Rosemarie Michaels
Active Inquiry Pt. 1
15 September 2015
Elapsed Time: Learning to Teach Math and English Language Learners
This past week, our class joined a third-grade classroom to observe their math lesson on
elapsed time. The third graders reviewed how to tell time on an analog clock and how to use an
open number line before beginning the lesson. They were given a math message, or word
problem, to determine the length of a music lesson and were allowed to work in partners to find
the answer. They were encouraged to use different strategies, such as looking at an analog clock
or using an open number line. After completing the problem and sharing their strategy, students
were introduced to a future project where they will use sunrise and sunset times to map the
length of day over the course of the school year. During the lesson, the teacher used many
strategies to help her students learn. These exemplified Teacher Performance Expectations
(TPEs) 1, Specific Pedagogical Skills for Mathematics Instruction and 7, Teaching English
Language Learners.
Within the lesson, two strategies that the teacher used specifically for teaching math (TPE
1) were creating a secure environment for math exploration and encouraging different methods/
strategies for solving the problem. Throughout the lesson, the teacher asked students to answer
questions orally. If they answered the question incorrectly, she didnt say No, wrong answer, or
make the student feel like a failure. She would say, That answer would be correct if I had asked
this question, making the student understand that they hadnt answered the correct question, but

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had still participated in the lesson and was welcome to continue trying. This created a space for
learning math where everyones input was valued and students felt safe to answer questions and
explore math. The teacher also encouraged students to use different or multiple strategies, such
as an analog clock or an open number line, to solve the problem. Once students had used a
strategy, she questioned them as to whether their answers should be the same. This taught them
that there is a right answer to the question, but many ways to reach it. The students demonstrated
this understanding by answering her question Yes. The teacher then explained through student
examples that even within strategies there can be different approaches, such as different sizes of
jumps on a number line. This taught the students that all ways of approaching a problem can
bring the correct answer and that there might be a faster way to reach the answer, but whatever
strategy makes the most sense to them will work as well. Students demonstrated this learning by
using many different strategies.
The teacher also aided her English Language Learning (ELL) students (TPE 7) during
this lesson. Two strategies that she used were going over incorrect vocabulary terms as a class
and incorporating pictures and hand signals when learning new terms. During the warm up
activity, student counted from 9:00 to 10:30 by fives. Some students said, Nine oclock, nine o
five, nine o ten, nine o fifteen, while others said, Nine oclock, nine o five, nine ten, nine
fifteen, causing confusion. The teacher asked her students if they wanted to go back and try
again, and the students nodded and smiled, showing their understanding of what they had done
wrong. Not only were students able to self-correct, but they were able to do so in a way that was
non-threatening and aided their learning of English. When students were introduced their future
project of charting sunrise and sunset times, sunrise and sunset were new vocabulary words.

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The teacher helped her ELL students to keep these similar terms straight by showing them
pictures of each and giving them hand signals. When she said, sunrise, she moved her hand in
an upwards motion. When she said, sunset, she moved her hand in a downwards motion. The
combination of both picture and hand motion gave the students multiple ways of remembering
new terms and their meanings. Students demonstrated their understanding by copying her hand
motions and saying the words as a class.
All of the strategies that the teacher used in this lesson were geared towards aiding
students, whether that aid be towards learning math or the English language. Her students were
given a safe learning environment where everyone felt welcome to try and encouraged to find
their own answer to a problem. I will try to make my future classroom a similar safe space and
will encourage my students the same way. She supported her ELLs by correcting their
vocabulary in a non-threatening way and by giving them multiple ways of remembering new
vocabulary words. I will remember to correct the language use of my future teachers gently, and
will also incorporate multiple memory tools into vocabulary lessons. The elapsed time during
this lesson observation was well spent.